by Howe, A. E.
“If you’ll give me a chance, I’ll tell you.” His tentacles became more agitated as his temper flared. Carter pinned them down and put the bag back over them. “This settles them. Anyway, yes, I saw a letter from Josephine’s uncle. In fact, there were several correspondences between Nicolson and a Professor Weller. Weller was an archeologist at the university. The letters described various objects that Nicolson claimed to have seen, or possibly found. He was vague on that point.”
“Why did he write to the professor?”
“Because the objects were so out of place. Nicolson was also aware of Innsmouth and the strange reputation it already had, and he thought some of the objects might have a connection. Weller had done surveys of the population around Innsmouth at the turn of the century, when he was studying anthropology. It turned out that Weller’s attempts to get a master’s in anthropology based on his hypothesis of the genetic and cultural origins of the Innsmouth-type were consistently turned down, which is why he wound up in archeology.”
“What were these objects?”
“That was the odd part. They were a mix of gold items from various ancient cultures. Nicolson wanted the professor’s opinion on whether they could be real. Weller told him that they might be. In fact, one of the items had been reported stolen form the first Egyptian antiquity museum in 1837.”
“You mentioned Innsmouth. What is the connection?”
“There were also some very strange items described in the letter. Several were similar to esoteric pieces that the professor had seen during his research.”
“How did Nicolson know that?”
“He referenced an article in the Miskatonic Archeology Journal. The professor had written a short monograph on several items he’d found in Innsmouth. Nicolson saw the journal article and contacted the professor. Look, can I tell you about my hand now?” Carter was clearly irritated.
“No. You still haven’t told me why you are here. Do you have the Necronomicon with you?”
“Yes,” Carter admitted. “Specifically, I came here looking for the Innsmouth connection. I arrived on the island before the end of May. I did some scouting around and thought I was on to something. I found some strange carvings on several of the trawlers. In the process of getting a closer look at them, I brushed some barnacles off one of the boats and cut my hand. I didn’t think much of it and hurried back here to consult the Necronomicon. I was sure the symbols I’d found on the boat were identical to symbols in the book.
“I was searching through the book when blood from my hand dripped onto the page. Then I started to feel a tingling and smelled an awful odor, like fish rotting on the beach. When I looked down, there was a tendril of putrefying flesh stretching from the book to my hand. I managed to cut it away, but not before my hand started to change into this.” He removed the bag again. The tentacles writhed and twisted in the air.
“The worse part is that I think, whatever this horrid corruption is, it’s creeping farther up my arm.” Carter’s eyes were wide and panicked-looking. It was clear that he could only maintain his composure for short stretches. “You’ve got to help me!”
Blasko could barely resist repeating his original warnings about the use of the Necronomicon. But the almost suicidal expression on Carter’s face made him bite back his retort. “What have you tried?” he asked in his best clinical manner.
“I went back through the Necronomicon. Carefully.” Carter emphasized this last part. “But I couldn’t find anything about how to reverse this. Hell, I couldn’t find anything that would have done this in the first place!” He waved his hand in the air while the tentacles wiggled obscenely.
“Of course not. This wasn’t something you called up. Instead, it was the result of you unwittingly bringing various unsavory elements together.” Blasko stared at Carter’s hand, fascinated in spite of himself. “Do you have a knife?”
“I thought of that,” Carter said flatly. “I… don’t know if I can do it.”
“Do you have any feeling in the tentacles?”
“I do and, as I said, I have some control over them.”
Gingerly, Blasko reached out and felt the moving digits. The half dozen suckers on each tentacle slurped at Blasko’s hand as he flexed the appendages tentatively. He tried not to shudder.
“Look away,” Blasko said. When Carter turned his head, Blasko took a small folding knife from his pocket. He opened it and stuck it into the smallest tentacle. Carter screamed.
“What the devil are you doing?”
“Confirming that your nerves are connected to the ones in the tentacles.”
“I already told you they were.”
“So… How much liquor do you have on hand and how badly do you want to get rid of this abomination?”
“I can’t… You can’t… My hand.” Carter’s words were barely audible.
“Would you rather keep it as it is?” Blasko asked bluntly.
Carter shook his head. “I can feel it creeping up my arm. I’ve measured its progress. I lose a quarter of an inch every day.”
“Then you want it gone?”
“Please. Think of something.”
Blasko took a small pouch out of his jacket pocket and pulled out a gold coin, holding it up in front of Carter’s face.
“Look at the design on this coin,” Blasko said softly. The gold reflected the lamplight as Blasko moved it back and forth in front of Carter’s eyes. “Breathe deeply. Fall into the darkness. Watch the coin move back and forth…”
Blasko figured Carter knew that he was being brought under the vampire’s control, but his desperation and exhaustion made it easy for him to let go, like a man freezing to death in a snowstorm.
Once Blasko could hear the man’s steady, rhythmic breathing and he was sure that he controlled all of Carter’s thoughts and emotions, he told him to lie down on the floor. As Carter followed his instructions, Blasko felt the slightest tug on his desires. As he’d taken over Carter’s mind, Blasko had sensed the blood pulsing in his veins. For a moment the craving was intense. It wouldn’t be right to take advantage of the poor man, Blasko thought. Besides, his blood is tainted by whatever caused that monstrosity to grow in place of his hand.
Blasko went to the kitchen and found a large butcher knife lying on the counter. He figured it was even odds that Carter had already contemplated using it for what Blasko intended. Stepping over to the gas stove, Blasko lit the burner and set the blade of the knife on the flames. Then he searched until he found a ten-inch cast-iron skillet.
Five minutes later, Blasko was back with his patient, checking on his breathing.
“Lay your left arm out straight,” he told Carter in a low, firm voice. Dutifully, Carter placed his arm out. The tentacles were writhing frantically, as though they knew what was coming.
The change had spread up Carter’s arm to about four inches below his elbow. Blasko wondered how much of the apparently normal part of Carter’s arm he should remove, along with the hellish appendage, in order to get rid of all of the affected tissue. Best not to be too conservative, he decided before placing the blade of the knife at the joint of the elbow.
“Makes more sense anyway, because I doubt that I’d be able to cut through the bone with this knife. At the elbow, I’ll be able to cut through the joint,” he said to Carter, though the man was not likely to hear him. “Gruesome work. Best if I finish it quickly.”
Blasko began to saw through the flesh. The gristle around the elbow proved too much of a task for the butcher knife. When the handle snapped off, Blasko hurled the broken instrument across the room. “Bah! I should have brought my sword.”
Before he got up to look for more tools, he instructed Carter to slow his heart rate down. His gentle suggestions brought the man’s pulse low enough that the wound bled only a little. The smell of it almost overwhelmed Blasko. He kept his hunger pinned down through sheer force of will, knowing that if he gave in to it, he might not be able to control himself.
He found a metal
toolbox under the kitchen sink. He clutched the small-toothed saw he found inside and rushed back to his patient. After just a few minutes of steady sawing, the foul thing was finally separated from Carter’s body.
Blasko retrieved the skillet that he’d left warming on the stove burner. He came back to Carter and placed the searing hot pan against the nub of Carter’s arm, cauterizing the wound. Taking a clean undershirt from Carter’s bag, he wrapped the stub of the arm tightly. The shirt slowly turned red as Carter’s arm continued to bleed. Blasko kept his hand pressed firmly against the shirt, fighting the urge to rip it off and drink from Carter’s wound.
The presence of the blood was engulfing and intoxicating. Blasko tried to focus on the withering tentacles, still squirming around on the floor, to remind himself that while the blood smelled enticing, it was most likely infused with whatever evil filth had grown out of the Necronomicon. After a while, Blasko could feel through the makeshift bandage that he’d managed to stem the flow of blood. The searing of the flesh had done most of the work.
Once again, he searched the small house until he found several bottles of liquor. He set these down beside Carter and slowly began to bring him out of the trance. Blasko had learned by experience that it was dangerous to leave someone in one of his induced trances for too long. There was danger of drifting into a coma from which they would never return.
Blasko could order Carter not to feel the pain of his wound, but that would have a very limited effect. The body could be fooled for only so long. He did what he could and hoped that the alcohol would serve to deaden the pain that remained.
Chapter Fifteen
“Heaven help me!” Carter begged as he awoke. His eyes were rolling madly as he looked around the room.
“I’ve removed the… infection from your arm,” Blasko told him, watching him placidly.
“What kind of bastard are you?” Carter clutched the stump of his left arm. “You butcher!”
“You know that removing the corruption was the only chance you had.”
“I don’t know any such thing. You’re a half-ass surgeon. Did you lap up my blood while you were mangling me?”
“I’m offended that you would even suggest such a thing.” Blasko stood up and looked down his nose at Carter, who was rocking back and forth with tears of pain streaming down his face. He would never admit to the man that he had been drawn to his blood. “I am sure your angry words are just an outgrowth of your pain.”
“They bloody well aren’t.”
“Drink some whiskey. That will help the pain.” Blasko scooted a half-full bottle of amber liquid closer to Carter, who grabbed it, pulled the cork and downed everything in the bottle in three swigs, followed by a coughing fit.
“Okay, okay.” Carter coughed again. “Is it dead?” he asked, looking at the remains of arm on the floor.
Blasko poked it with the broken blade of the butcher knife. The tentacles clenched reflexively, then remained still.
“Yes. The thing is dead.”
“That’s good.” Carter looked at his stump. “There really wasn’t a choice.”
“Exactly.”
“But don’t expect me to thank you any time soon.”
“Of course not. Now, do you know anything about the strange guests at the hotel?” Blasko asked, ready to get back to his investigation.
A guilty look crossed Carter’s face, but he shook his head. “I’m in pain! I’m not up to answering questions right now.” Carter’s eyes closed as he fought off another wave of agony.
“I could have extracted information from you while you were in a trance.” Blasko’s tone made it clear that he wasn’t going to be sidetracked.
“All right, all right, yes, I sent them letters before I left Arkham. When I saw the list of the different artifacts that Peter Nicolson claimed to have found, I developed a list of institutions that might be interested in acquiring them.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to be the only stranger in town. One stranger among half a dozen or more would receive less attention. And if there was an… infection like the one that overtook Innsmouth, I wanted some cover in order to come to the island and get to the bottom of things. Besides, I’m not interested in the museum trinkets.”
“But they don’t know that you’re here?”
“I sent them the information anonymously. Like I said, I just wanted them here to create… a little chaos.”
“Did you know that a local man was murdered this morning?” Blasko was gratified by the shocked expression on Carter’s face. “He attempted to steal a letter from Josephine. She resisted. The man got away with half the letter, but was stabbed by a third party.” Blasko recited this as if narrating a newsreel.
“What… The man who tried to steal a letter from Josephine was then killed by someone else?” Carter reached out and uncorked another bottle of whiskey.
“That’s what I said.”
“What letter? I’m assuming it was from her uncle. He mentioned in several of the letters to Professor Weller that he was prepared to bring in outside resources, and I was reasonably sure that he meant hitting up his brother the banker. When did he send the letter?”
“The letter she was carrying had been left at the post office for Josephine’s father to pick up.”
“What did it say?”
“Why do you care if you’re not interested in the gold?”
The look on Carter’s face told Blasko what he already knew. “Damn! More accursed literature.”
“Nicolson described journals and several volumes that would be… rare.” Carter saw the look on Blasko’s face. “You have a right to be scornful.” Carter held up his stump. “The pain is less now.” His words were slightly slurred as the alcohol took effect.
“You deserve some pain,” Blasko said, then relented. “Though I’m not sure you deserve to be turned into a mutant octopus.”
The tentacles were now a rotting mess on the floor. Blasko decided to get rid of the hideous thing. With some effort and not a little nausea, he managed to carry it outside on a piece of wood and bury it in the back yard. Back inside the house, he found Carter half asleep on the floor.
“Come on. Let me help you into bed.”
“Yeah, all right…” Carter muttered as Blasko all but lifted him off of the floor.
“Do you have any idea where Peter Nicolson found all those items, or where they came from?” Blasko didn’t feel the least bit guilty for taking advantage of Carter’s present state to wheedle more information out of him.
“No. Maybe.”
Blasko nudged him. When the man didn’t say anything, he nudged him harder. “Maybe what?”
“A manifest,” Carter said groggily, rubbing at his stump.
Blasko slapped his hand. “Don’t pick at it. What manifest?”
“Ship. Found in papers from Innsmouth.”
“A ship’s manifest?” When he received no answer, Blasko gave Carter a poke. “You found a ship’s manifest that had some of the same items on it?”
“Library in Arkham. Private collection. Recovered from Innsmouth during…. all that stuff.” Carter was making less sense as he fell into unconsciousness.
Blasko stood and considered pulling a sheet over the man, but the room was stifling. Instead he picked up the empty bottles and took them into the kitchen. He tried to remember what it had felt like to be drunk. After hundreds of years he had the vaguest recollection of intoxication, but not of the aftereffects—though Blasko figured that the pain of Carter’s stump would override any headache he might have. As a last gesture, Blasko filled a glass with water and set it on the nightstand beside Carter’s bed.
He found a key by the door and locked up the house as he was leaving. With a sigh, he decided that he would need to check on Carter’s condition before returning to the hotel to sleep.
Outside, the air was warm and humid. The moon was directly overhead and Blasko could hear the sound of boat engines idling down at the docks. He w
as determined to get a closer look at some of the odd men who went out fishing late at night.
As he walked to the docks, he tried to decide how he would use the information he’d received from Carter. He knew he’d have to tell Josephine, though Blasko was sure that the man wouldn’t want her to know about his hand. Not that he was going to be able to hide the fact from anyone now that all he had left was a stump.
Once he was in sight of the boats, Blasko shook the other thoughts out of his head and tried to concentrate on the challenge before him. He made his way to the same spot where he and Donavan had watched the boats the night before, but tonight he was alone. He watched as the fishermen shambled around the dock, their heads downcast as they went about their various tasks.
Six trawlers were lined up at the docks and, offshore, Blasko could see the lights of half a dozen more. He watched the boats at the dock move off one by one, until there were only two left. One boat’s engine was idling and its crew moved about anxiously, while the men on the other boat seemed concerned. One man was pounding on something at the stern of the boat, and Blasko assumed there must be a problem with the engine. There was some excited chatter that even Blasko’s ears couldn’t make out, and the volume wasn’t the only problem. It sounded like more of the strange tongue he’d heard the previous night. There was a little more conversation, then almost all of the men joined the crew of the functioning trawler. Soon they cast off, leaving the one man alone on the dark and silent boat.
Once Blasko was sure that the man was focused on his work, he began to move toward the dock. There were lights in a few houses nearby, but there was no else outside. Blasko walked at a steady pace, seeming to blend in with the shadows and making no sound. Willing himself to drift across the wooden planks as though he weighed nothing, he approached the back of the trawler. Suddenly the man seemed to sense that he wasn’t alone, but before he could turn his head, Blasko leaped onto the boat and grabbed the man by the wet, firm skin of his neck.
“Don’t make a sound. I just want—”
The man opened his mouth, issuing a fetid odor that so surprised Blasko that he lost his grip. The creature, for Blasko was no longer sure that it was a man, took advantage of his lapse and slipped out of his grasp.