The Last Ritual

by S. A. Sidor

  Except Nina.

  I did a slower, more thorough search. My head was full of bootleg alcohol and fear.

  On the floor, by the edge of her bed: a broken pearl necklace. The pearls scattered. Were those scuff marks scratched into the floor? Had she been physically dragged away?

  Kidnapped?

  Too fast now, images flickered through my mind. The gargoyle. All the cases of those missing and murdered Arkhamites: Dr Silva, the Galinkas, Ganz and the boxcar drifter…

  Headless Clark…

  Would Nina be another name among the missing? Or worse?

  The next phase of the ritual: another sacrificial elite. Was Nina’s theory correct?

  I tried to think… Think, Alden… I could almost hear her coaching me along.

  Look for clues.

  But where? What was I even looking for?

  I went through Nina’s closets, her dresser and nightstand. In the drawer of her writing desk I found what I needed. A reporter’s notebook. I’d never seen her with it, but she must’ve taken it along when she went out alone. Jotting more notes after she got home.

  I flipped the cover.

  Blank. Not a single scribbled word. Why keep it in her desk if she didn’t use it?

  Damn it!

  Wait. Caught in the spirals at the top were fringes of pages that had been torn out. Why would she tear pages out of her private notebook? She wouldn’t. But someone else might. I held the notebook under her desk lamp. I saw impressions of handwriting pressed into the paper. I rummaged in the desk and found a pencil. I rubbed the pencil back and forth over the impressions, until the words of the last page she wrote became, mostly, readable. It was the same thing I’d done to copy the gargoyle’s message off the door. Here I knew the author. I recognized Nina’s handwriting. These were her words.

  out last night to dig up info (Galinka sisters) Found who hired them to dance at the CC. The girls were popular!!! Had avid fan turned up some nights. After shows, they sat with man. Alone, private. He took them out. Where? Unknown. Not far away. In town. Maybe Clark???

  Not Clark. Descript all wrong.

  Tall, handsome, beard. Accent?

  Man bought gifts. Dresses, jewelry, etc. Paintings!!!

  JHB???!!! Who else? But was months ago. How did he?

  Balthazarr in Arkham, months before he said he arrived. Was it possible? It was only Preston and Juan Hugo himself who told me when he’d gotten into town. The bottom half of the page was spottier. Not all the words transferred through from the ripped-out page.

  Black Cave. Underground lake. Unvisited Isle. Docks. Hospitals and Hotels!!!?

  Arkham police too dangerous – infiltrate every aspect

  Must tell A Smarten up. Watch out especially for

  be playing games with us. Don’t trust N. Colonists. Spying – listen through walls – the mail

  They do rituals. Not everyone but… Will ask more ???s

  P&M in deep. P suspected but – unknowingly controlled them puppets

  JHB again 2PLACES AT ONCE?

  Tell A it has to be

  I reread the page a dozen times, then I read it some more. What did I see?

  Nina listed locations of strange activity in Arkham. The cave, the pool we found there. The island where the sisters were burned. The docks where the bootleggers operated and where the net blob pursued me. Dr Silva was hanged outside a hospital. What about hotels? Balthazarr’s current address was at the Silver Gate and it might be the new location of Preston and Minnie’s wedding. Then came Nina’s constant worries about the police. Here’s where the gaps started to take a toll. “Infiltrate every aspect” could mean the police or it could mean someone else. But who? The murderers? I didn’t know. “Must tell A. Smarten up.” I assumed I was “A.” Who did I need to “watch out” for? Perhaps the answer lay in the next line. The New Colonists. Playing games, spying, eavesdropping…

  “They do rituals. Not everyone but…” But mostly everyone. The Colonists couldn’t be trusted. We lived among them. Nina was going to ask more questions. Of whom exactly?

  I didn’t have any suspects in the Colony itself. But P and M had to be Preston and Minnie. Our friends. Well, my friends at least. Nina didn’t know Minnie. Preston was her ex.

  Preston “suspected” something. Who were the “puppets” she mentioned? The Colonists? Nina and me? Or none of the above. It was too damned vague.

  Too many pieces were still missing.

  Juan Hugo Balthazarr in two places at once. What could that possibly mean? Did he control the “puppets”? The gargoyle leapt into my mind, wings flapping, laughing in my face.

  Nina was gone. Who took her away? There was no obvious solution.

  “Tell A it has to be…”

  It didn’t have to be! Not if I could help it.

  I ran back downstairs and outside, seeing if I could find more evidence of Nina’s kidnapping. A piece of clothing. A footprint. Blood in the grass. No, not that. Because I was certain she’d been taken against her will. I knew it in my gut. In my heart too. While I was out partying at the Clover Club with Preston and Balthazarr, witnessing God knows what taking place on that stage, someone or something crept into the Colony mansion and stole Nina.

  The sky was still dead black. The only color came from factory smokestacks and the flash of early-rising gulls searching for breakfast scraps.

  I was trembling.

  What had I witnessed at the Clover Club? Was it a feat of hypnotism like Balthazarr said? It felt more real than a magician’s parlor trick gone awry.

  Or was it a preview of a cosmic catastrophe? Dimensional collapse? The cigarette girl in her pillbox hat. Did she die? Had Balthazarr murdered two people in a room full of witnesses and walked away?

  What was my role in all this?

  Nina. I had to find her.

  Nina…

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Following the events that transpired at the Clover Club, I went to the newsstand daily and bought the Advertiser, hoping to read a report of the incident. I wanted to know what the police uncovered, the number of victims, names of those who were arrested, and what explanation the authorities provided for the calamity. But there was nothing. Only a local business article relating that La Bella Luna bistro was closed temporarily for remodeling.

  It was baffling.

  How could such damage and human turmoil be ignored? It had to be a cover-up. Nina’s suspicions concerning the police explained how these odd deaths might be kept hidden from the public. Now I believed she’d been correct all along. Here was the proof.

  I couldn’t go to the police about her disappearance. No. I was convinced they wouldn’t help me. Talking to them might lead to false charges against me. Who knew who pulled the strings in Arkham? I’d thought I did, but I was wrong. I didn’t want to end up in jail.

  At least two people died in the Clover Club. I saw it happen.

  With my own eyes.

  Balthazarr said he hypnotized the crowd, including me. But Nina didn’t trust him. And now I didn’t. He’d made me doubt myself. I couldn’t easily shake off that feeling either.

  Self-doubt hounded me. I was paralyzed by the idea that anything I attempted would be destined to fail. How could I find Nina? I stayed close to home at first, hoping she’d turn up. That I’d been mistaken about her leaving against her will. She’d taken a trip. That’s all.

  She did not miraculously reappear.

  I walked the streets of Arkham looking for her. What else could I do? I didn’t trust my New Colony neighbors any more. Preston and Minnie were nowhere to be found. When I stopped by the Fairmont house, the family butler told me Preston was not at home. He was out of the country, in fact. Beyond contact at the moment.

  “Out of the country? Doing what?”

  “Traveling.”

  �
��Traveling?” I sneered, obviously unsatisfied with that answer. Unwilling to leave.

  “Perhaps he is working out details for his wedding. The date is officially changed.”

  “Changed to when?” I asked, confused and insulted that I hadn’t been informed. I was still in the wedding party, wasn’t I? An old friend, a confidante. Or so I had been led to think.

  “March, sir. Saturday the 27th,” he said, one hand on the door, already closing it.

  I stuck my foot in. “Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure. The event is scheduled at the Silver Gate Hotel.”

  “I’d like to talk to Mr Fairmont. Please tell him to call me as soon as possible.”

  “Very well, sir. Good day.” He shut the door in my face.

  •••

  To pass the time and distract myself, I painted, my work diving deeper into surrealist territories. I painted with oils exclusively during this period. A large vertical canvas depicted the gargoyle soaring skyward from behind the rickety wooden fence. His proffered knife twirling in the air, as the viewer’s feet (my feet) stayed planted in the yard, the foggy Miskatonic to our left. Another canvas, horizontal, showed a panorama of the Black Cave’s subterranean lake, a pale sea monster disturbing its sable depths. But my greatest project during this burst of creative energy was a triptych of the Clover Club. The three panels captured phases of the ritual I witnessed. Balthazarr himself at the microphone. The floating bodies of the cigarette girl and the goon. And, lastly, the transfigured brick wall leading to an imaginary world of threat and terrors.

  Without knowing it at the time, I had just painted myself into the history of Surrealist visionaries. I was one of them now. But, in the moment, I was emptying my mind as it continually refilled with hallucinatory images, a relentless parade of dreams that invaded me daily, nightly.

  January became February; February leaked into March.

  One afternoon that felt more like a memory of winter than the promise of springtime, I ventured out from my studio, returning to the docks. It was reckless. I felt desperate, foolhardy. My latest work endowed me with a sense of immortality, and at the same time I yearned for something to break my world, even if the broken thing knocking inside it was me.

  At the corner of the last dock, I was surprised to find Christophe and his little red wagon, roasting chestnuts, stirring them with a long spoon on his charcoal grill.

  “One bag,” I said.

  The one-eyed former soldier recognized me immediately.

  “Haven’t seen you in a while.” He scooped up the hot chestnuts into a paper bag.

  “I’ve been around. Isn’t it late for chestnuts?”

  Christophe shrugged. “It’s never too late if I have customers.”

  We stood there watching longshoremen unloading cargo from a ship. The air was cold, but you could sense the pressure of a coming change, a new season in the offing, the passing of time like smoke from Christophe’s grill floating, disappearing.

  “I’ve been looking for my friend, Nina.”

  Nina, Nina. She was never far from my thoughts.

  “Isn’t that what you were doing the first time we met? Looking for the same girl?”

  I smiled. “You’re right. I was.”

  “And I introduced you to Calvin.”

  “You did.”

  “He was just here,” Christophe said.

  My heart jumped. “When?”

  “Oh, maybe a minute ago. I sold him a bag. He went walking down that way. Where are you running to? Are you crazy? You dropped your bag.” Christophe pointed with his spoon to the chestnuts I spilled on the gravel.

  I was running after Calvin. I went in the direction Christophe pointed.

  But I saw no one.

  I kept going.

  I came to an intersection and scanned the cross street both ways. There!

  The easy-flowing walk of a man of slender build. He wore a heavy overcoat and a dark wool stocking hat. He was smoking a cigarette, and in his fist was a rolled-down paper bag. I chased after him.

  “Calvin!”

  The man turned as I descended on him. It was Calvin Wright. He looked shocked to see me. I grabbed him by both shoulders. The cigarette fell from his mouth.

  “I found you,” I said. At last, a chance! Did he know the whereabouts of Nina?

  “Alden! I’m working for the same people. We have a ship coming in tonight.”

  “Where is she? Where is Nina?”

  Calvin acted as if he didn’t understand my question. He rested his hands on my wrists until I released him. He looked at me with pity. “I don’t know where Nina is. I haven’t seen her since that day we were at the camp when you were hit so badly in the head. Are you feeling… better?”

  I laughed bitterly.

  Calvin shook his head, worriedly. “The O’Bannions broke up the camp on the Miskatonic. The cops were onto us. The gang moved me up to Canada for a while. The other end of the operation. I helped bringing shipments down to the states. I got back a week ago.”

  I hung my head in disbelief. “Freddie and Winston are dead.”

  “I know. A rival crew caught them out at the camp.”

  “No, no. That’s wrong. We think the Colonists killed them.”

  Calvin stepped back. “The Colonists?” His hand went into his coat pocket. I wondered if he had a knife. Was he with them? I didn’t know what to believe any more.

  “Nina and I went down into the Black Cave. They were dumping Clark’s body…”

  “Who’s Clark?” He took another step away from me. Wary, perhaps even frightened.

  “He was my friend. It isn’t important. You’re telling me you haven’t seen Nina since the day that watchman cracked me over the head with his bat?” My temples were pounding.

  “That’s right.”

  “My God. Where is she? Where could she be?” I said to myself, walking away.

  Calvin tried to get me to go to a diner with him. He wanted to calm me down, to find out what I knew about Balthazarr, the Colony, and the Clover Club. I refused to go.

  “I have to find Nina,” I said. “No one is helping me.”

  “That’s what we’ll do, you and I together. First, you need to get control of yourself.”

  “Where’s that warehouse?” My mind raced. “You told us it was around here. The place where Dunphy did his stone-carving.” My hands balled up; all my muscles clenched. I had to do something, anything. It felt like my skeleton wanted to free itself from my flesh.

  “It’s up the street. But that was months ago. I don’t expect they’ve kept anything.”

  We went up the street and, no, they hadn’t kept anything. Because where the warehouse once stood was now a vacant lot filled with the charred rubble of a building.

  “I hadn’t heard about a fire,” Calvin said, at a loss.

  “No. How could you? Thank you for your time.” I tried to leave.

  “Wait. Let me walk with you. I’ll get us smokes. We can talk.” Calvin ducked into a shop to buy cigarettes, and I left. Turning quickly around corners. But I didn’t go home. I wandered the streets of the city, thinking, trying not to despair, failing miserably.

  The other Colonists shunned me now. I didn’t want to talk to them. Or even see them. Life in New Colony had become terribly, awfully ordinary. Nina’s disappearance was accepted, a tasty piece of communal gossip that faded and was replaced by more recent news. It drove me mad. I only stayed in case she came home. If only she were still here…

  I had to find answers. So I decided to go where the answers were most likely to be.

  To do what I’d dreaded doing for so long.

  I had to see Balthazarr.

  •••

  Balthazarr had taken up residence in the penthouse suite at the Silver Gate. He lived and worked on the top fl
oor, with a view of the entire city available to him. I showed up at the hotel one afternoon, while cold March rain slashed the hotel façade. I asked at the hotel desk for them to ring Balthazarr’s suite. I knew the artist had a reputation for sleeping late, but he’d be awake by now. In effect, I imagined he knew I was coming down to the hour, maybe even the minute I called on him.

  “Mr Balthazarr says you should come right up. Elevators are across the lobby.”

  “Thank you.”

  The old guy operating the elevator greeted me cheerily.

  “Good morning, sir!”

  “Good morning.”

  “Oh, sir, don’t I know it. I know it in my heart. Every morning is a good one.”

  What a peculiar man, I thought. Happy in his work. Ignorant of the dangers lurking.

  He transported me up to the penthouse.

  “To your left. Enjoy your visit. Once you stay here, you’ll never go anywhere else.”

  I thanked the old man and watched the doors close on his grinning face. I walked the long hallway. The carpet was plush. The wallpaper geometric and modern. I felt as though I were inside a work of art. An artificial facsimile. Fake. Unreal. What is real? How can one know? At the end of the hallway, the door stood ajar. I was peeking in when I heard him.

  “Welcome, Alden. It has been too long. Please, don’t be shy.”

  I pushed the door open. I didn’t see anyone. The main room of the suite was a tremendous mess. No maid had cleaned in here for weeks. Balthazarr transformed the rooms into a version of his home studio from Spain. Paints, canvases, brushes soaking in muddycolored jars. Beautiful wreckage wherever the eye landed. Someone had attempted to spread several drop cloths on the furniture and carpeting. They’d been moved and shifted around so that whatever protection they had offered was now nil. I found the bathroom. Empty. The sink was running. I turned the faucet off. Balthazarr’s untidy, vacant bedroom. Cushions arranged on the floor. The bed stripped. The nightstand covered with drippy, melted candles and bottles of varying design. It reminded me of the floor tiles of South Church. But I tried not to look too hard. I didn’t need distraction or to feel more uneasy. Wet roof. Dunphy falling.

  Where did Balthazarr sleep?