Ghouls of the Miskatonic (The Dark Waters Trilogy)

by Graham McNeill

  The dead bodies, the gnawed bones, and the fire falling like incandescent waterfalls from the heavens. Flesh liquefying on bone and pouring from bodies like molten rubber. How easy it was for enlightenment to turn to horror! The treasure trove of books he and Alexander had found had turned out to be a poisoned chalice, a tainted well from which they had drunk too deeply.

  Henry remembered Jameson babbling in a tongue no one knew, weeping as he put the pistol in his mouth and blew his brains over the castle walls. Mortimer had dashed his skull to destruction on the stone floor of the hidden library, while Warren had turned his madness outward, fighting the Germans like a berserker from the Norse legends, tearing men apart with his bare hands. He’d received a medal for that, yet for Warren it was no passing thing, no act of bravery spurred on by danger, but a near-constant state of being.

  He could remember little else of the war, just fleeting images of bloody bodies, fire, and accusing eyes reflected in pools of dark water. The guilt of those days burned brightly in his heart, but he had tried to make amends, tried to put those years behind him. Was everything he had done since the war meaningless?

  Henry turned to the window and gripped the bars tightly. He looked up at the moon as it hid its face behind the clouds.

  “I’m so sorry, Oliver,” he said. “I tried to stop it, but it had already begun.”

  The moon appeared from behind its clouds, bathing him in its stark illumination.

  The universe cares not for your regret…

  Henry shrieked, hearing the words as though voiced by an invisible speaker at his shoulder. He spun around, seeing his room slashed by black spars of shadow from the barred window. The far wall undulated, as though constructed from billowing sailcloth instead of brick and mortar.

  “Oh God! Please not again!” wailed Henry. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”

  The shadows did not answer him, writhing on the rippling surface of the bare wall, spreading and reaching out to him as the light from the moon diminished. Though the darkness was impenetrable, Henry could hear the sound of guttural chanting, hideous grunts, and the smack of wet lips from beyond. The stink of stagnant water and blood filled his senses.

  Henry screamed and ran to the door of his cell.

  “Please!” he cried. “Monroe! Anyone! Please, help me! It’s me, Henry Cartwright! I need help. God, please I need help!”

  No one answered his cries, and he pressed his back to the iron door as the shadows on the wall oozed onto the floor, flowing like oil pouring from a ruptured drum. The darkness glittered with sparkling iridescence, flecked with gold and silver as something pushed its way up through the floor. An outline began to form as the amorphous slick rose higher and higher through the floor: a man’s shape, yet no features were visible, only darkness.

  Henry covered his eyes and wailed in terror to see this black form of a man appear before him. It was no man, of that he was certain, rather some dread avatar summoned from the depths of his guilty memories. Fully emerged, the oily liquid drained away, leaving the unblemished form of a man in a Marine Corps service uniform with a badge depicting the winged staff of a corpsman pinned to his lapel.

  Henry looked into the man’s eyes, seeing the face he had known he would see, the features he saw in the mirror when he was taken to be washed. His doppelgänger smiled, yet there was no warmth to it, only cold malevolence.

  “Say the words, Henry,” said the uniformed figure.

  “No, no, no, no…,” cried Henry. “I won’t. Not again.”

  “You feel them inside you, I know you do. They are still there, crawling and slithering within. They need to be free. You have to let them out. Go on, say them for me. You learned them once, you can say them now.”

  “Please don’t make me.”

  “I must.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I want you to.”

  “You’re not me!” shouted Henry. “You can’t be me!”

  “I think you know that’s not true,” said his mirror image. “I am the guilt you feel at every moment. I am the fear and horror of what you did. I am the absolution you crave. I am all these things and more, but you have to say the words. Let the fire free, Henry. Let it do what it does naturally. Bring the fireflies out. Do it, do it now.”

  “Please don’t make me,” begged Henry.

  “You need to do it, Henry,” said the man. “Time is running out and threads must be severed before the design unravels. You understand, don’t you?”

  “I don’t,” sobbed Henry. “I never did…”

  The doppelgänger waggled an admonishing finger and grinned. “Now, even you know that’s a lie. Say the words with me, Henry, Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthugha…”

  “Don’t make me,” said Henry. “I can’t.”

  Even as he said it, he knew his will to resist was crumbling like a wholly insubstantial flood barrier. The waves of his hideous interlocutor’s will were battering down the fragile clarity and strength he had regained. The intolerable madness that had engulfed him for the last three years closed in on him.

  “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh…,” he began, each dreadful syllable torn from his throat under protest, his vocal chords tortured by sounds no man was ever meant to utter. Henry clamped his mouth shut, pressing his hands to his jaw in an attempt to strangle these sounds at birth.

  “That’s almost it,” said his doppelgänger. “But you have to say the rest, Henry. I need you to say it all.”

  Henry fought to keep the words from coming, biting his tongue and filling his mouth with blood. It streamed down his chin and the reek of it sent his mind spinning through time to the moment the heavens opened and a magma rain fell upon a once picturesque French wood.

  * * *

  “Shouldn’t we wait for the police?” said Oliver as Stone climbed out of his Crossley and took off his long brown duster. Stone’s entire demeanor had changed since they had uncovered the location of the ghouls’ lair. His face was hardened to granite, and his words came out clipped and brutal, as though he had donned a facet of his persona that would allow him to kill another human being.

  “You think Amanda’s got till they get their fat asses outta bed?” said Stone. “We don’t move now, she might be dead by morning.”

  Oliver had to agree with Stone’s logic. With Rita’s escape, Amanda’s chances of survival dropped dramatically. No sooner had they divined the location in which they believed Amanda was being held than Stone had set off for his car. Rex and Minnie had bundled into Stone’s ex-military car while Alexander had placed a call to the Arkham Police Station, and Oliver had fetched his own Ford from the street outside. Thus gathered, they had driven three blocks to Crane Street in the shadow of Axton Field House, the newly built training ground used by Miskatonic’s sporting crowd.

  Oliver’s Ford and Stone’s Crossley were parked in one of the narrow alleyways that gave access from Church Street to the numerous service courts at the rear of the buildings. Splintered crates and packing materials littered the edges of the alley, and the reek of rotting trash was a pungent stench.

  Stone eased up to the edge of the alleyway and looked out. Behind him, Oliver and Alexander hugged the wall, while Rex and Minnie kept to the rear. Minnie had her camera out, though Rex was lumbered with carrying the tripod. Oliver’s heart was in his mouth at the thought of them rescuing Amanda. Stone was armed, the Pinkerton agent a force of nature, like a hero from the movies. Unstoppable and implacable. But he was the only one.

  Church street was cobbled, and formed one edge of the main shopping area of Arkham. The stores here were varied and numerous, and Oliver had spent many a leisurely Saturday afternoon wandering its length, peering into shop windows and marveling at all the new things there were to buy these days. The character of the street was subtly altered now. The sidewalks were empty and many of the shops were boarded up, their proprietors having fled the town for safer locales.

  The building on the corner of Crane and West was still under construc
tion, an iron-framed shell that would house the university’s new School of Language, Literature, and the Arts. A thin chain-link fence surrounded the construction site, but there were numerous gaps in the fence where kids had pulled it open.

  “All clear,” said Stone, dropping to one knee and turning to face Oliver. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. We run straight across the street and go through one of the holes in the fence around the construction site. Follow me, step where I step, and keep low. We get to the far side of the site, and that should put us right on the corner of the AQA frat house.”

  “And then what?” asked Oliver.

  “Then I go in and I get Amanda,” said Stone.

  “What about the rest of us?” asked Rex.

  “What about you?”

  “Do we go in with you?”

  “You ever fired a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Then you stay outside,” said Stone. “You’re a reporter, so report.”

  “Suits me,” said Rex.

  Stone turned his attention to Alexander. “Templeton, you’ve used a weapon before, right?”

  “I have, but I swore I wouldn’t fire another gun so long as I lived,” said Alexander. “I fear I would be of no use to you in a gunfight, Mr. Stone.”

  “I’m going in with you, Gabriel,” said Oliver. “I promised Amanda I would help her, and that’s what I’m going to do. I failed her once before, but I won’t this time.”

  Stone looked set to argue, but Oliver cut him off. “Don’t waste your words, Gabriel. I’m going in with you. Now you can either give me a gun or I’ll find a two by four in that site and come in swinging at your back. Which would you rather?”

  “I’d rather neither, to be honest,” stated Stone. “But if you’re coming in, watch my back.”

  Stone rolled up his trouser leg and unsnapped a small, snub-nosed pistol from an ankle holster. He slapped it into Oliver’s hand.

  It was lighter than Oliver had expected, and almost ludicrously small. It looked like a child’s toy, but this was no toy—this was a device that could kill a man. With one tiny pull of the trigger, an entire human life could be snuffed out as easily as blowing out a candle. The thought gave Oliver pause, and for a brief moment he considered handing the pistol back to Stone. Instead, he gripped it even tighter.

  “Okay professor, this is a .22 revolver. It’ll put a man down at close range, but you’ll need to put a couple of rounds in him to make sure. It ain’t no small thing to shoot another man, but you got to know that if you don’t kill him, he’ll kill you. Understand?”

  “Yes, I understand,” said Oliver, though the thought of actually shooting another living being was making him sweat. He didn’t know if he could do it, but what choice did he have?

  “Just remember to point it at bad guys and try not to shoot me or Amanda,” said Stone, before adding, “or yourself for that matter.”

  Stone quickly demonstrated the safety catch and how to reload the weapon. Once again, Oliver was struck by the childish simplicity of it all. Surely a weapon designed to kill should be complex and difficult to use? But then, how complex was a club, an axe, or a sword? The one thing humanity excelled at was in making it easy to kill one another.

  Satisfied Oliver understood the basics of the weapon, Stone nodded and set off across the street. Oliver and the others followed him, ducking down through the hole in the chain-link fence. Cut off from the streetlights, the incomplete building was a bleak, lightless form against the sepulchral sky. With half-finished walls, stairwells with no stairs, and gaping voids where floors were yet to be raised, its outlines were strange and unfamiliar.

  Stacks of lumber and bags of sand and cement lay piled in neat rows, conveniently providing shelter from the nearby buildings. It seemed incredible that they were moving like soldiers through enemy territory when this was Arkham, a seemingly normal town in the heart of New England. Of course, Oliver knew it was far from normal, but the strangeness of their actions was not lost on him.

  Starlight and a faint, diffuse glow from the moon illuminated their journey. A particularly bright star hung low in the southern sky, outshining its closest neighbors by quite some margin. Oliver had no idea which particular star it was, but it shimmered with a faint reddish hue, as though caught in a ripple of heat haze. He dismissed the star from his thoughts as Stone came to the edge of the construction site and peered through a gap in the fence that separated it from the edge of the frat house.

  Oliver joined him at the gap as Minnie and Rex began setting up the camera. Alexander pressed himself to the fence and gripped Oliver’s shoulder tightly.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, Oliver?” asked Alexander. “You don’t have to, you know.”

  “No, I do have to,” said Oliver. “Amanda’s counting on me. I promised her.”

  Alexander sighed. “Nothing I can say will dissuade you from entering that building?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Then remember Stone’s advice. If you have to shoot, shoot to kill. Show no compassion, for they will surely show you none.”

  Oliver took Alexander’s hand and shook it. Rex and Minnie shook his hand, too, and wished him luck.

  “You ready?” asked Stone, removing a long-barreled Colt from his holster. The powerful handgun made Oliver’s weapon look like a pea-shooter.

  “Frankly, no, but let’s go before I lose my nerve completely,” said Oliver.

  * * *

  Stone ran in a crouch, swiftly closing the distance between the edge of the construction site and the frat house. Oliver ran after him, feeling awkward and exposed in the glow of the stars and the lights from the house itself. Stone reached the frat house and pressed himself against the brick walls. Oliver did likewise, and the pair of them edged around the building toward the back door.

  Oliver could hear voices from within, and took a deep breath at the thought of pointing a gun at the owners of those voices. Stone’s eyes swept the back yard of the frat house, looking for anyone loitering outside.

  “What are we waiting for?” whispered Oliver.

  “Getting a feel for the place,” said Stone. “Waiting to see if there’s any guards.”

  “Are there?”

  “I don’t see any, but what do you suppose those are?”

  Stone pointed to the rear of the yard, and it took Oliver a moment to see what he meant. A number of metallic pipes emerged from the ground, almost flush with the ground, but not quite. Some effort had been made to disguise them with trash, but it was clear that these had deliberate purpose.

  “Air vents maybe?” suggested Stone, when Oliver didn’t answer.

  “Perhaps,” agreed Oliver. “But air vents for what?”

  “If you’re going to keep an army of cannibal monsters in the middle of town, you’d best keep them underground, right?”

  Understanding dawned. “The cave Rita was held in. It’s right underneath us. That means the ghouls are down there, too.”

  “Most likely,” agreed Stone, snapping off the safety on his Colt.

  Oliver did the same with his own gun, and followed Stone as he climbed the steps to the back door of the frat house. Stone moved slowly, his steps silent on the concrete. He pulled open the screen door and tried the handle of the inner door. A shake of the head indicated it was locked.

  Stone stepped back and delivered a thunderous kick to the lock. The door swung open, smashed to pieces by the force of the impact. Stone slid inside the building and Oliver ran after him, keeping his gun low at his side.

  “Amanda Sharpe!” bellowed Stone. “Are you in here? Amanda Sharpe! If you can hear me, shout out!”

  Oliver stepped into a long hallway, and was immediately hit by the faint, but unmistakable miasma of rotten meat. Stone walked coolly down the tiled hall with his Colt stretched out in front of him. Voices shouted from upstairs and Oliver could hear the clatter of running feet. Though it was cold outside and not much warmer inside, Oliver was sweating profusely.


  A figure appeared at the end of the hallway, clutching a long knife with a serrated edge.

  “Drop it!” shouted Stone. “Do it now or I swear to God I’ll put a bullet in you!”

  The figure ran toward them with a strangled roar, raising the knife to strike.

  A deafening bang filled the hall and the attacker was snatched back with a hole blown in its chest. Stone fired another shot, and the body slumped to the ground, leaving a fan of bright blood on the wall. Stone moved forward and Oliver went with him.

  The corridor brought them out into a wide vestibule, probably at the front of the building, the hallway they had just come along connecting the two sides of the house. Oliver glanced down at the man Stone had killed, and winced at the terrible damage the bullets had done. Two bloody craters had blown out chunks of his spine and shoulder.

  Oliver knelt beside the body, and turned the man’s face toward him. Drawn in a rictus mask of anger, the features spoke of the nobility of humanity being twisted into something darker. Any doubts Oliver had harbored as to the nightmarish truth of the AQA fraternity were swept away by the sight of a face devolving toward the bestial. Was this an intermediary stage of devolving a human being into a ghoul? Had this man, this boy, willingly submitted to be so altered?

  The thought of volunteering for so terrible a transformation horrified Oliver, and his grip on the pistol tightened. It would be a mercy to put such twisted abominations out of their misery and spare them from the horror that awaited them at the end of this blasphemous degeneration.

  “Come on, Oliver,” snapped Stone. “We have to keep moving.”

  As if in answer to that thought, two booming reports filled the entrance hall. Oliver cried out as a portion of the wainscoting beside him exploded in a blast of wood splinters and plaster dust. He fell onto his backside as Stone dropped to one knee and brought his weapon up to aim at the landing above.

  He fired twice and another man fell dead. Stone moved to the bottom of the stairs as another target presented itself. Before he could fire, a shot smashed into the newel post at the bottom of the stairs and made him duck back. Oliver heard more shouts coming from the rooms on either side of the hallway.