That Ain't Right: Historical Accounts of the Miskatonic Valley (Mad Scientist Journal Presents Book 1)

by Emily C. Skaftun

  Kyle turned to me, his eyes shining, the pupils dilated. He smiled. "We call our rides, Mother, the Byakhee. Out of the blackness they come, out of unfathomable places where they ride from cold flame to cold flame. And their body is the sacrament. Only those who have eaten their flesh can ride their roads, their roads, strange, looping in and out of the places deathless and eternal. And as we ride they eat us, until we become part of them." He raised his face to the open sky and let out the most terrible scream.

  Like oiled leather they came, with skeletal flesh, wearing harnesses strung with bone. Hybrid creatures, bat and bone, buzzards, crows, ants and skin, and creatures dreamed only by nightmare. And the men jumped on their backs and one by one the creatures flapped their membranous wings and rose into the air.

  Until only two beasts were left.

  "The sacrament, Mother, take it willingly. Remember the feel of the weird in your veins."

  My son, my old/young son, jumped onto the Byakhee's back and stared at me, willing me to follow him.

  And I swallowed down that morsel of tainted flesh. I mounted the back of that unwholesome creature that screeched as it rose into the air.

  And I rode into the coldness, the never echo of my other life stretching forward into the long road of the night.

  * * *

  Cassandra (Cassie) Woodroofe née Ruggles lived in the Miskatonic Valley all her life. She was gainfully employed as a waitress at The Happy Burger, Arrowshaft, for the last five years. Colleagues of Mrs. Woodroofe describe her as a quiet woman who "minded her own business." Mrs. Woodroofe's mobile unit in Nirvana Park, Arrowshaft, was left abandoned in April 2014. Her estranged husband Sam "Solid" Woodroofe is wanted for questioning by the Miskatonic Valley Sheriff's Department concerning her whereabouts.

  * * *

  Kelda Crich is a new born entity. She's been lurking in her creator's mind for a few years. Now she's out in the open. Find her in London looking at strange things in medical museums or on her blog. Kelda's work has appeared in the Lovecraft E-zine, Journal of Unlikely Acceptance, Mad Scientist Journal, and in the Bram Stoker-Award winning After Death anthology.

  * * *

  The Ghost Circus

  From the Journals of Joris Severen, as provided by Philip C. Gonzales

  * * *

  "It only takes a bit of pressure," the Ringmaster explained, "and the head should come right ... there."

  The child's head rolled off the filthy table and landed among the sawdust and viscera.

  The Ringmaster let a contented sigh escape his lips, lifted the bespattered goggles from his eyes, and mopped his brow.

  "Well," I said, snapping a picture with my battered Leica, "that was certainly an enlightening experience. And the child's spirit is where now?"

  "Why, floating through the ether!" the Ringmaster explained, shedding his stained apron and exchanging it for another. "Playing with angel clowns and angel trapeze artists and angel trained poodles even as we speak! She is a part of the Ghost Circus now!"

  I chanced a look down at the small head resting near my feet. The pathetic creature had put up a bit of a fight there near the end. Years of exposure to some of the harsher elements of the strange had inured me to the oft-times brutal and bloody practices I might encounter in my journeys. I had, after all, sat through more than one public flaying, several trans-piercings, and more than my share of poetry readings. And yet my gorge still rose. I tamped it back down by focusing my thoughts on the importance of investigation, the ideals of journalism, and the rent on my modest flat. The quiet repose on the dead girl's face betrayed none of the terror it had displayed earlier and stood as proof of the Ringmaster's hypothesis. At least, it would for my readers. I snapped another picture.

  "And how many children have you sent to ... the Ghost Circus?" I asked.

  "Oh, several," the Ringmaster responded. "Tens of several. Dozens? Many dozens? I have a catalog in my tent. All of them transient and orphaned, so my work can be seen as a necessary service on both sides of the equation. The children get a happy future and society at large is unburdened of one more member of its increasing criminal class."

  "And the body?"

  "My dear sir, we have lions!" the Ringmaster declared and let out a hearty laugh. I laughed along. It was a somewhat amusing answer.

  #

  The William Price Circus had first come to the attention of Unbelievable World Magazine through the whisperings of our network of mediums--the few living human beings capable of interpreting the shudderings and wailings of the deceased and deranged--who formed a sort of psychic relay across the United States and who passed along rumors and speculations of disturbances in the "connective tissue" of the netherworld. In recent years, these "few living humans" had bloomed from several dozen into several hundred. A fact that I suppose should have touched off a few alarms. But hindsight and all that.

  In 1931, several mediums began reporting "traveling fluctuations" that eventually revealed themselves to be following the railway schedule of a relatively unknown circus owned by one Mr. William T. Price. The traveling show would set up outside small towns, promising the usual flea bitten animals, lackluster side show deformities and tired feats of mediocre derring-do. But rumors had been circulating that well-paying audience members were being offered the opportunity to witness in private what was coming to be referred to as "The Ghost Circus"--a vision of spectral wonders that left witnesses in a state of rapture for days on end.

  A state of rapture or drooling half-consciousness--depending on the source of the rumor.

  This being exactly the sort of story Unbelievable World trades in--and frequently has to invent whole cloth--my editor Pattison Blake dipped into our dwindling budget and had me on the first train to parts undesirable.

  The Miskatonic River Valley was not unfamiliar to my editor or to me. This blighted northeastern area of Massachusetts had been the location of several of our more popular features. The towns of Arkham, Innsmouth, Kingsport, and Dunwich (and please don't ask me if the 'w' is silent; no one knows) had all seen their share of strange goings-on in the past decades. Miskatonic University housed many ancient and terrifying tomes--as well as ancient and terrifying faculty--that had worked their way into the pages of Unbelievable World. Those who managed to flee their upbringing in the Miskatonic Valley rarely returned. It was, in short, a miserable little part of the country.

  I'd located the William T. Price Circus with relative ease--they had set up operations on an ashy expanse just west of the town of Arkham--and arrived shortly before the evening's show was to begin. The faded tents and jerry-built animal cars dotting the area did little to elevate the oppressive and claustrophobic air of the damned spot. A few listless clowns slumped near a battered water barrel and a small congregation of families filed slowly into the Big Top. I purchased my ticket from a sullen pig of a woman and followed the swelling crowd.

  The performance itself was as underwhelming as I'd expected. Introduced by an under-rehearsed and possibly mentally-deficient master of ceremonies, a few mildly trained animals cowered under the whips of a cabal of less-trained humans to the tuneless pooting of a pipe-organ. Bareback riders--who probably spent more time bare and on their backs than practicing the equine arts--flounced about the ring on horses that would have been better put to use hauling logs after the show. And clowns "entertained" the children in the crowd with japes and jokes that would have been considered failures if the clowns hadn't seemed so willing to accept the nervous whimperings of small boys and girls as proof of success.

  In all, an average traveling circus.

  Until the end.

  As the final clown shuffled out of the ring--and presumably into a bottle--a spotlight illuminated a lone figure standing with arms outstretched in the center of the ring. This was not the man who had introduced the show and announced each act. This man was a true Ringmaster. He wore the garb of a salesman from a medicine show broadside: top hat, long coat, twisted mustache. In one hand, he held a megap
hone and in the other a metal rod.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," he'd boomed. "Children, too. Especially children. Thank you for attending our little entertainment. The evening is ending, but before you head back to your homes. Before you tuck yourselves in for the night. Before you drift away into that landscape we call 'Dream' I have one final treat for you."

  The Ringmaster hoisted the metal rod into the air and held it so the crowd could see.

  "Science!" he bellowed. "Science is a beautiful thing!"

  And with that, a pair of burly troubadours wheeled a wagon into the ring. The wagon was covered in a tarp, which concealed something the size of a small elephant or a large cow. The way it rigidly jiggled as the cart bounced over the rough floor suggested something stiff and mechanical, but certain aspects of the way the tarp hugged various contours suggested a biological component as well. Whatever it was, the audience grew noticeably quiet as it reached the center of the ring.

  The Ringmaster handed his megaphone to one brute and took the corner of the tarp in his free hand.

  "Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, you will all bear witness to the fruits of seventeen years of research, experimentation, blood, sweat, and ... many, many tears."

  The Ringmaster lifted the frayed corner just enough to reveal a round gray plug-hole. He raised his metal rod once again, giving the crowd a "do you see?" look before plunging it into the waiting socket, creating a shining toggle-switch.

  "And now," he said--and although he whispered, we all of us heard--"gaze upon ... The Ghost Circus!"

  The Ringmaster, in one practiced flourish, flipped the switch.

  Ten years ago, in a remote corner of the African continent, I found myself imbibing a revolting mixture of pig's blood and tree sap that froze my senses and sent me into convulsions that threatened to snap my limbs. Two years later, in a dilapidated Parisian apartment, I devoured whole a fecalith bezoar the size of a modest orange, gagging on its putrescence, but choking it down that I might glean the knowledge it protected. Just last winter, in darkest Sweden, I participated in the birthing ritual of an Evangeline Witch--the creature emerging fully grown from the nether regions of a crucified orang-utan--which involved the consumption of an acidic compound known to produce terrifying hallucinations, quite possibly including the emergence of a fully grown human from the birth canal of an orang-utan.

  I present these charming anecdotes simply to convey to any reader that I am no stranger to the strange. I witness the bizarre on a semi-regular basis as a part of my research and, as a result, have grown difficult to impress regarding strange sights.

  So allow me the courtesy of accepting that the sights I saw at the William Price Circus were particularly strange.

  Having thrown the switch, the Ringmaster stepped back a considerable distance as whatever the tarp concealed commenced to undulate, throb, pulsate, and grind. The tarp itself--a heavy beige sheet of canvas--rose and fell with each pulsation and, in places, began to dampen. With what, it was not clear.

  An odor permeated the interior of the tent--coppery, like blood, but with a whiff of ozone and something else. The smell of a men's gymnasium after a wrestling match. A primal smell. The hairs on the back of my hand began to tingle. I cast my gaze about the crowd and noticed people shifting uncomfortably in their seats. Several small children had begun to silently cry. No one spoke. Silenced gripped the audience.

  The space above our heads ... dissolved.

  It was as if a hand had reached through the very fabric of the air itself, grabbed a fistful of reality, and pulled. Light bent inward and, where it bent, certainty itself seemed to resolve into a--I hesitate to use the word "truer"--but "truer" version of what we usually see.

  I lived for a time undercover in China, acting as a visiting poet in order to infiltrate a cabal of American expatriates who sought to bring about the end of the world through an inscription hidden in a Song Dynasty portrait of Yue Fei. When I had arrived, my knowledge of the language had been nonexistent--I found myself at a loss to communicate with anyone outside the boorish group of expat cultists--but each day I spent several hours meditating along the banks of a river and eavesdropping on the small-talk of several tradesmen who frequented the area. Their discussions were a garbled jumble of nonsense to me, but one day, about six months after I had arrived (and three months before the tragic events covered in my feature story "Blood of the Jade Moon") I realized that the men were discussing a local politician and some of the trouble he had gotten into regarding a young woman and ten casks of rice wine. Their words sounded no different, but I was suddenly able to perceive the meaning behind them, and it revealed a heretofore-unseen layer of the world around me.

  I can find no better way to describe what we, as an audience, collectively witnessed in that Big Top. Through a bending of light and reality, we perceived, for no more than ten or fifteen seconds, a glimpse of our world as it actually is. The truth as we know it was translated into a higher truth. And behind that truth?

  Something moved.

  It flitted past with the energy of a hummingbird. It existed in my range of vision for no more than a second, but it was there. I saw it. And, for a brief moment, I was terrified.

  Then the window closed. And we were left in silence.

  If you were expecting me to describe a pandemonium or panic following the spectacle, I'm sorry to disappoint. The crowd applauded wildly, the Ringmaster bowed, and the families proceeded to file out of the tent as if they had witnessed nothing more than a particularly impressive high wire act. The Ringmaster held his position on stage, scanning the crowd, a look of intense concentration on his face as if searching for something. Or someone.

  Seeing my opening, I hurried down the rows of bleachers and approached the man.

  Twenty minutes later, I was watching him strap an orphan child to a table and remove her head.

  #

  Later that night, over dinner in the Ringmaster's private tent, he showed me photos of each of the young victims. Boys and girls, ranging in age from three to about thirteen, each appearing filthy, half-witted, and desperate.

  "I see it as a charitable cause," he reiterated, his mouth full of ham.

  "Indeed," I said. "Still, it seems an awful risk. Certainly, there are people in authority who might find your actions reprehensible at best, criminal at worst. How can the gain possibly justify the peril?"

  The Ringmaster paused in his chewing and stared at me. After a long minute, he swallowed and sat upright. With his shift in demeanor came a shift in the atmosphere of the room.

  "The Ghost Circus, of course. The Ghost Circus is worth any risk. The Ghost Circus will ..."

  Here, the Ringmaster cut himself off.

  "I believe," he intoned, "It would be in all of our interests to have you witness the Ghost Circus firsthand."

  "Is that not what we observed under the Big Top?" I said.

  "That?" the Ringmaster responded. "Good heavens, no. That was simply the bait. Typically, I can attract the attention of one or two people who really see what my device is showing them. I admit to being disappointed in tonight's crowd. I'd expected more from this region."

  "Any particular reason why?"

  The Ringmaster gazed at me with a look somewhere between pity and envy.

  "I have borne witness to events far beyond anything you could ever imagine," he said, "and I am compelled to share them with the world. Ten years ago, I was hired on by Mr. Price as a barker for his sideshow. It was not a dream of mine; a scandal in my home town caused me to take flight and seek employment on the open road."

  "Scandal? What sort of--"

  "I was a doctor of some reputation," the Ringmaster said. "My methods were unorthodox, but they produced results. Certain 'squeamish' members of the local council disapproved of my practices, however, and the later discovery of ... unmarked burial plots led to the wrong sorts of attention. Pausing only to gather up certain belongings and books that I had pilfered from the local university library, I slipped a
way in the night, following the railway and, happily, the William T. Price Circus."

  "When did you start killing children?" I asked.

  "Understand, my findings are only made possible by these small sacrifices."

  Striding to the back of the tent, the Ringmaster threw back a flap, revealing the cart from earlier in the evening, its contents still obscured by the large, beige tarp.

  "Accessing the unknown," he said, "seeing the truth behind the truth, answering the oldest questions known to man ... this responsibility can no longer fall to spiritual leaders, men of faith, or students of the human mind. No. You do not travel from Arkham to New York by wishing; you travel by machine. And what I have discovered is not a new way of seeing; it is a new way of travel. The children are a mode of transport. I discovered this when I was practicing medicine and a child died under anesthetic. As his spirit sighed away, a hole opened in my mind. But this was no fluke. I experimented on more children and discovered ways to harness their energy using the techniques of modern science. Chemical. Mechanical. My inventions were small and simple, but very effective. After I fled, they lost much of their power and I had to build larger and more complex machinery to generate the forces capable of rending the fabric of reality. I supplemented this with certain esoteric codes and chants derived from the scribblings I'd discovered in my stolen books. These weren't the magical incantations scholars had always assumed them to be. No, they were formulas, keys to hold open the hidden gateways. But it wasn't enough.