He had almost finished going through the contents of the folder when he came upon another photo that caught his attention, this time it was one of a star-shaped stone, identical it seemed to the one on his night stand. Looking further, there was a quote from Prof. Dyer calling it a “Mnar stone,” something that sources in certain historical texts claimed to have protective properties, but protection against what, he didn’t say. Then something began to tickle the back of Stillnor’s mind. He went to a cabinet and found a street map of Arkham. Unfolding it, he located the places where Danforth had been sighted earlier that evening. Taking a pencil, he drew lines radiating from those points and then, assuming a five pointed star pattern, completed the form. The places where Danforth had been found digging were located at the points of the assumed star. Could it be that there was method to his madness? If so, then Stillnor was certain he could now predict where Danforth would appear next!
Excited with his theory, Stillnor decided that it was too insubstantial to report to the police. He’d take his car and go to the next place he thought Danforth would go. But so as not to waste his time, he called the police to find out if his patient had been sighted anywhere else since Detective Shonross had paid him a visit. He was, but again, escaped before he could be apprehended. Hanging up the phone, Stillnor marked the location on his map. It still fit the pattern! Quickly, he grabbed his coat and ran out to the garage. Backing out the car a little too quickly, he forced himself to calm down and take his time driving to Front Street where a little park would provide the perfect place for digging.
It was almost dawn by the time Stillnor pulled up across the street from the park. There were a few benches but no playground equipment. This was simply an island of green in a neighborhood of older homes that had been renovated in recent years. Slouching down behind the wheel, Stillnor prepared for what he expected to be a short wait. And right enough, it wasn’t long before some movement caught his eye and a white-garbed figure creeped from the shadows and made its way to the park. Quietly, Stillnor slipped from his car and raced across the street keeping a row of hedges between himself and Danforth. Peering over the shrubs, he could see him on his knees already, digging with a stick he’d found, not an easy task what with the late autumn cold. Cautiously, Stillnor rose and tip-toed toward Danforth then, with a quick lunge, threw himself on top of him. As expected, Danforth struggled mightily but Stillnor had a good grip on him, or thought he did. Danforth managed to break free and, spinning about must have recognized Stillnor because he stopped suddenly. But there was nervous tension in everything about him as he crouched, ready to run at the slightest provocation.
“Mr. Danforth,” gasped Stillnor in an attempt to reassure him. “Remember me? I’m Dr. Stillnor.”
“I remember you, doctor,” said Danforth in a voice Stillnor barely recognized. “You want me to go back to the hospital. Well maybe I will after I’m done with what I have to do.”
“What do you have to do, Charles?” asked Stillnor, using Danforth’s first name to reinforce a soothing familiarity.
“Star stones,” said Danforth, looking this way and that as if fearful of being discovered. “The Old Ones’ sign and their protection. Prof. Dyer…”
“What about Prof. Dyer?”
“Dyer, Dyer, Dyer!” shouted Danforth, suddenly. “Dyer hid them and I have to find them before it snows! It’s his fault I had to go!”
At a loss for words, Stillnor could only stare, hoping Danforth would regain control of himself and let him take him back to the hospital.
“The voice in my head!” agonized Danforth as he pounded his skull with his fists in some kind of desperate attempt to drive out whatever it was that had compelled him to flee the hospital and disappear for weeks. “The voice won’t leave me alone! It tells me what to do and I don’t want to do anything! I just want to be alone! Alone!”
“Get hold of yourself, Charles,” soothed Stillnor. “I’ll help you but first we have to get back to the hospital…”
“No! I have to get the stones, break the wards, end the protection — the voice said so,” insisted Danforth, obviously struggling in some sort of mental tug of war. “Dyer hid the stones. Dyer and I. He said they’d protect us from them. I don’t want to remove them but the voice says they work against hybrids too, so I have to. I have to!”
With that, Danforth finally lost control and ran off into the night leaving Stillnor looking helplessly after him.
Not knowing what else to do, Stillnor decided to return home and inform Shonross of what he had discovered about predicting Danforth’s movements. He determined not to tell the detective of his own encounter with the patient, there was really no need. He was sure that with his information, the police could lie in wait at all of the remaining points that Danforth was sure to visit and nab him at one of them.
On the way home, however, Stillnor had the opportunity to mull over Danforth’s obvious agitation. Surely, from what he could see, the patient was still suffering from some residual effects of his catalepsy. His ravings made little sense and his agonized behavior indicated a great deal of internal confusion. Still, his condition was a great improvement over his previous comatose state and Stillnor had hopes that his patient could make a complete recovery under proper psychological care.
The key was to free him of the delusion that he was hearing voices, voices that seemed to blame Prof. Dyer for his predicament. Clearly, Danforth attached significance to digging up the so-called star stones that he claimed…wait! The star stones! They were obviously for real because Danforth had been digging them up, one was even delivered by Shonross to his home! Despite himself, Stillnor was suddenly forced to accept the fact that aspects of Danforth’s ravings were based in reality. What was it he’d said? That it was both he and Dyer who had hidden the stones. For some kind of protection against…what? Suddenly Stillnor found Danforth’s case to be more complicated than he first assumed. The more he considered it, the more questions he had.
Back in his study, Stillnor made his call to the police. It took a while to convince Shonross of his “theory,” but at last he succeeded. That done, he was free to again look through the material given him by Zarnak. There was mention of the star stone so-called in Dyer’s old monograph about what he liked to term “the mountains of madness” and their apparent connection to a pre-human race of star-headed creatures he termed “Old Ones” but nothing about any protective qualities they might have. Also, there was mention of Danforth’s mental condition upon their return to the United States and their agreement not to discuss details of what they’d found in Antarctica. Clearly, from the monograph, Stillnor could tell that something had shaken Danforth greatly but was it really some ultimate horror hinted at by Dyer? What he needed, thought Stillnor, was more information about what Dyer and Danforth did after they arrived home from the expedition. Why, for instance, did the two apparently bury star stones around Arkham? Smacking of superstition, the action made little sense for men of science such as Danforth and especially Dyer had been.
Considering, Stillnor now recalled that Zarnak had said that artifacts were brought back by the Dyer Expedition and had since been housed at Miskatonic University. The museum there, he knew, was quite famous for its collection of artifacts from around the world gathered mostly before the second World War. The institution had fallen behind somewhat in its display and cataloguing practices since those days but as he understood it, still boasted material that scholars found invaluable. Surely, among that material, he could find information on Dyer’s doings after he returned from that ill fated Antarctic expedition?
Stillnor had been too busy at the hospital the next couple of days to get away, due mostly to the return of Danforth, who had been captured by police at one of the locations he’d suggested. Trussed in a straightjacket, the patient had been able to walk into the hospital with a police officer on either arm but soon after being placed in his room, he’d lapsed into silence and refused to cooperate with the staff.
The apparent retrogression was very disappointing to Stillnor personally who had seen how energetic, if somewhat neurotic, Danforth had been only days before. Still, he’d hoped that upon his return to the hospital there would be a basis upon which to build an eventual recovery. That, however, didn’t seem likely and he was forced to fall back on a variation of the previous treatment regimen that had been in place before Danforth’s escape.
Thus, by the time the weekend rolled around, Stillnor’s professional frustration was such that he found himself willing to consider more unorthodox approaches to Danforth’s problem. Perhaps the answers did lie among Dyer’s papers housed at the Mikatonic library.
The weather was still frosty when he left home that Saturday afternoon for the short drive across town to the university campus. The sun never did make it much over the horizon as the days grew shorter, and already the shadows of coming evening stretched across the city with some areas where buildings crowded close together, in perpetual gloom.
As venerable as Miskatonic University was, it had not grown much since its founding, as most other such institutions had a habit of doing. It’s main buildings, including library and museum, were still crowded close together on some high ground overlooking Arkham’s historic downtown. Stillnor found some visitor parking below the hill and, joining a few students heading in the same direction, soon found himself in the overheated lobby of the old library building. The roomy hallways were all linoleum and polished wood frame, and through a pair of doors set in an entrance arch, Stillnor could see the reference section with its heavy tables, card catalogues, and shelves groaning under the weight of massed volumes. Entering, he spied the reference desk and approached a middle aged woman busy stamping arrival dates on the fly leafs of newly-acquired books.
“Excuse me,” said Stillnor. “I might be looking for something that could be in special collections?”
“Anything in particular?”
“The papers of Prof. William Dyer who held the archeology chair at the university in the 1930s.”
“That would be upstairs,” she said, pointing with her stamp in the direction of a staircase at the rear of the room.
“Thank you.”
Stillnor mounted the heavy staircase whose marble steps had been worn down over the years by the numberless feet of undergraduates. At the top, the landing was dominated by a large glass display case which upon closer examination, Stillnor was surprised to see contained the famous Necronomicon. He knew little about its contents beyond what he’d read in local newspapers from time to time, but he was aware that it was supposed to be an extremely rare copy. Briefly, he wondered why it seemed to be housed in such an insecure fashion. Well, he was here on other business at the moment and moved on to a doorway with a placard that read “special collections.”
It led to a medium sized room that smelled strongly of parchment and old books. Metal shelving crowded the available space leaving only narrow avenues between each. A scratched up wooden table with two chairs was pushed up beneath a pair of windows and in a corner, a tiny desk was covered in thick folders and a few ancient volumes.
“Hello?” ventured Stillnor.
“I’m here,” said a voice from among the stacks followed by the wizened features of what was no doubt one of the school’s retired teachers. “Yes? Can I help you?”
“I’m Dr. Aaron Stillnor, of the Pickerton Rehabilitation Hospital here in town,” said Stillnor. “I have a patient I’m working on whose case may turn on events that happened forty years ago and was hoping I might find records belonging to one of your former professors here.”
“What’s his name?”
“Prof. William Dyer. I think he may have taught here in the 1930s and 40s.”
“Oh, yes. Died in 1961. Served as chair of the university’s archeology department for many years.”
“Then you’ll know if any of his papers or records of any sort were preserved?”
“Naturally. Most of Miskatonic’s faculty bequeath their papers to the university…well most have anyway.”
As the clerk was speaking, he led the way into an adjoining room which was, incredibly, even more crowded than the first. Waiting in the doorway, Stillnor watched as the man made his way down one of the aisles and apparently found what he was looking for.
“We have all of Prof. Dyer’s papers here in bound volumes,” he said, looking over his glasses. “They’re labeled by year…”
“Those covering 1931 or so,” replied Stillnor.
Turning back to the shelves, the man reached up and pulled down one fat, crimson bound volume.
“Here we are Doctor,” said the man, handing the book to Stillnor. “I’m afraid it can’t be taken from the department though. You can examine it at the table here by the window.”
“Thank you,” said Stillnor.
At the table, Stillnor sat down and opened the book to the contents which indicated the bound records included Dyer’s scholarly papers and journals covering the years 1930-1935 and including material dealing with his celebrated expedition to the Antarctic.
Flipping to the relevant sections, Stillnor found the goals, itineraries, invoices, and lists of expedition members of the Antarctic venture as well as copies of the cablegrams forwarded to local newspapers from the advance camp set up by Prof. Lake. Although Stillnor had already seen much of the material in the folder Zarnak had left him, he was still somewhat surprised to find the more sensational aspects of the expedition confirmed in Dyer’s records. Here was the discovery of the hidden cavern, the strange star headed creatures or plants found there, the disaster that struck the advance camp after a sudden storm swept down from the mountains.
Here also was Dyer’s monograph written in an attempt to dissuade the sponsors of the Starkweather-Moore Expedition. It was rather long so Stillnor skimmed much of it, lingering only when Dyer mentioned the discovery of Gedney’s body deep in the bowels of the ancient city. Overall, he had to admit that the monograph did have a discomforting effect with its sense of mounting horror and hints that the builders of the city had come from another world and came to Earth millions of years before the appearance of men, indeed, were said by Dyer to have mastered telepathy and cellular manipulation and been the creators of human kind! It was rubbish of course. Dyer offered no definitive proof that any of his conclusions were even plausible, but however true or untrue they were, it was clear he believed them. So much so that only a few pages later, his journal entries indicated that after conferring with a colleague named Wilmarth, he seemed to have been convinced that use of star stones brought back by the expedition would protect him from something he feared might follow him from Antarctica. Consequently, he enlisted the aid of Danforth in burying a number of the stones around Arkham, arranging them in the pattern of a single large five-pointed star shape. In the following years, so far as Stillnor could tell, Dyer made no more trips outside of town and soon after burying the stars, Danforth went into cataleptic seizure.
So Danforth was telling the truth when he said he and Dyer had buried the stones! But if that was so, what about the other things he mentioned? Stillnor thought a moment. Danforth said that the five pointed star was the sign of the Old Ones…those whom Dyer claimed built the city in Antarctica…and that voices in his head were telling him to remove the stones, remove the protection…why? If the star stones belonged to the Old Ones, from whom did they need to be protected? In the monograph, Dyer said that Danforth had seen something even more horrifying than the star headed creatures found at the advance camp or the so-called Shoggoth that chased them out of the city. Was that what they were afraid might come after them even so far away as Arkham was from the bottom of the world?
He’d still not decided what to believe when it occurred to him that the Miskatonic’s museum was connected to the library building and that he could view for himself some of the artifacts returned from Dyer’s expedition. Suddenly convinced that the answer to his doubts could be found among the bones and petrified sampl
es that lay so near at hand, Stillnor returned his book to the clerk.
“Tell me, is the university’s museum open at this hour?” he asked.
“Every day until 8 p.m.” The man checked his watch. “But if you want to have time to look through it…there’s plenty to see…you’d better go now, it’s almost 7.”
“Already?” Stillnor was genuinely surprised. He had no idea that he’d been reading for so long. “Then you’d better give some good directions so I can find it without any trouble.”
The man did so and a few minutes later, Stillnor had traversed a short connecting tunnel in the library’s basement to an adjoining wing where he took another few minutes to find the corner housing the artifacts from Dyer’s expedition. The lights in this section of the museum were turned down low, no doubt due to the fact that it had few visitors. Standing in the gloomy corridor outside the exhibit, he had to chuckle that such a collection was even still on display forty years after it was gathered. Maybe there was some truth to the school’s reputation for being behind the times. Even the Peabody Museum in nearby Salem was rumored to be getting rid of its fabled anthropological collection in favor of a less offensive approach to aboriginal cultures.
Stepping under an arch giving way into the exhibit, Stillnor was startled after coming face to face with the biggest penguin he’d ever seen. Bigger than he ever suspected such animals to grow! Erected on a pedestal by the door, the stuffed penguin towered over him and must have stood at least 6 feet tall. Its pointy beak partially opened in a silent call, it seemed ready to leap down and charge across the room. Recovering from his surprise, Stillnor was forced to admire the animal and recalled Dyer mentioning such beasts while exploring the stone city.
Slowly, he made a circuit of the room, looking into its many wood and glass display cases and noting the yellowed character of the cards that gave descriptions of the various items. Here was a display of the tools used by the expedition to chip away pieces of ice and rock for samples, there photos of the expedition at different points: at a banquet the night before embarking, aboard ship, views of the Antarctic ice shelf, Dyer standing with some loaded sledges with the dogs milling behind, an aerial shot of the planes sitting on the snow at the advance camp. Stillnor looked more closely when he came upon a photo of Dyer and Danforth together and another of Prof. Lake directing drilling into the ice.
Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois Page 35