The Midnight Games

by Lee, David Neil;

Then he left. As the door closed I heard a voice from upstairs.

  “Is that you?” My father called.

  “Yes. It’s me.”

  Dad appeared at the top of the stairs in his dressing gown. He stretched lazily, acting as if he’d just got up from a delicious snooze, but he looked awful, haggard and anxious.

  “I was a bit worried,” he yawned. “Even though I knew you were safe with Sam and his family.”

  “What about those guys who were watching the house?”

  “They took off when Melanie showed up. She was onto one of them about staying the hell out of her yard. She was more than usually irate. She also told me to tell you to stay out of their yard. I didn’t understand everything she said. Someone got bit by Rocky? Not you, I hope.”

  Dad came downstairs and sat in the old armchair at the end of the couch.

  “It’s the Resurrection Church thing,” I said. “One of those creeps chased me, so I did what you always told me to do. Ran like hell.”

  “I thought we had an agreement that we would leave those people alone.”

  “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I told him that after a normal sleepover at Sam’s house, Mr. Shirazi had given me a ride home.

  “At six o’clock on a Sunday morning?” Dad proceeded to point out the holes in my story. He lectured me on how dangerous the Church could be, but also how, since they were so single-minded, they could easily be avoided. He reminded me how, stern as he might sound at the moment, he was always there for me. Or at least, this is what, later in the morning, he told me he’d said, because after talking to me for several minutes, he realized I’d fallen asleep on the couch, and was not benefitting from his wisdom.

  Lying there on my back, I dreamt of blood and blue smoke, and Dana lying on the dusty floor with his severed head between his pale hands, and of something monstrous that had come out of the night and, having finished its work with Dana, greeted me with parched chittering sounds in the dark, and left behind only death, and smears of goo, and monstrous three-toed footprints.

  I woke up when I heard Dad getting ready to go to work, and looked at my phone. Meghan. Homegrown. 11 am. I took a shower and changed my clothes. I picked up the library copy of the Necronomicon. Did I need it? No. Did the Resurrection Church want it? Yes. Couldn’t I make life easier for myself by going to their headquarters and dropping it off?

  No. To hell with those people.

  I searched my bookshelves. No way, if they managed to jump me, was I sacrificing Planet Hulk, Aliens vs. Predator Omnibus or Gustave Doré: Life and Art. I looked through the books my mother had left that no one had looked at in ten years. I found a title, wrapped it in some pages from the Spectator, wrote Necromonicon on one side of it in magic marker and looked at it for a minute. Did I spell that right? On the other side, for good measure, I wrote Necronomicon. It was all just confusing. Dad was heading out the door, so I stuck the book in a shopping bag and took the bus downtown with him, leaving him to change buses at MacNab as I headed to the café.

  CHAPTER 14

  HPL

  Scanning the downtown streets, I saw no signs of Mister-perfect-hair Proprietor, or Clare and Jimmy. And after all, unless they’d shadowed me, why should they be there? They had their own church, out among the weeds and train tracks at the end of Markle Avenue. In the corner of a parking lot I saw the familiar logo, as always with a different slogan:

  NEW JERUSALEM

  BUILDED HERE!

  There was nothing scary about that; the logo was everywhere these days.

  On Homegrown’s patio, a skinny, grey-haired woman in a print dress smoked a cigarette with one hand and held her wool coat closed against the autumn wind with the other. She ignored me, but I kept my eye on her as I approached. When I saw her take a last puff and shiver, I shivered too. For all I knew she was a cult member watching me as warily as I was watching her. I thought of turning around and going home. But where would that get me? In her text message, Meghan had said, “mutual cooperation can only be beneficial.” She hadn’t been to a midnight game, or seen what happened to Dana, but after our dustup at the library maybe she was starting to take the Resurrection Church of the Ancient Gods more seriously. I stepped inside and scanned the few customers the place had this Sunday morning. Meghan wasn’t one of them.

  Some kind of folksy music was playing in the background and there was a warm aroma of coffee and baked goods, so I immediately craved muffins. I sat down a little ways from the door and pulled out my phone. I looked at it intently. Not because I had an urgent message – as usual, there was nothing – but because I wanted to look busy and distracted, since, like an idiot, I hadn’t grabbed anything to eat at home, and now I was starving.

  Besides, if I was going to spend any time in the café, I would have to buy something. I figured that the change left over from buying yesterday’s Timbits should be plenty, but I furtively checked the menu over the bar to see what was cheapest.

  Muffin. Hot chocolate. That should do it. Where was that change? I groped through my jacket pockets, then my hoodie pockets, then my pants pockets. There was a draft of cold air as someone entered the café.

  “Excuse me – might you be Nathan Silva?”

  Where the hell was my money? Finally I found it. Not as much as I’d figured. Then I looked up.

  Looking down at me was not Meghan, but the weird-looking dude who had come to my house the day before. With his tweedy suit jacket, white shirt and wisp of dark hair over his pale forehead, he looked like he had been photoshopped into the café from It’s a Wonderful Life (bank teller) or the Godfather trilogy (frightened bystander). I suddenly forgot how hungry I was and panicked. I looked around for others, but this guy had come alone.

  “Sorry.” He had extended his hand to shake mine, but I didn’t know what to do. Finally he gave up and sat down across from me. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  I tried not to look as nervous as I felt. Still, at least he was acting friendly. No one in the Church had ever done that to me.

  I looked around. It was Sunday morning and not very busy, but everyone else seemed to be minding their own business. This didn’t seem like an ambush. The guy’s tone was amiable and at just this moment, the emptiness of my pockets had given me a sinking feeling. I needed someone who would buy me breakfast.

  I blurted out, “But where’s Meghan?”

  He looked at his wristwatch. “Of course, the young woman from the library. I certainly hope she makes it. She wasn’t sure she could. I tried to impress upon her the urgency of our problems. One of our members told me that the library’s copy of the ’71 Necronomicon went missing on her shift.” He shook his head. “So difficult to convince the average person just how dire the situation is. That’s why I’m so glad you responded to my text.”

  “What text was that?”

  He looked puzzled. “I texted you that we should meet here; surely that’s why you came.”

  “But it was Meghan who texted me.”

  I pulled out my phone and checked Messages. Who else would it come from? The signature was HPL – and she was the only person I’d met at the Hamilton Public Library.

  I looked up and saw Meghan out on the sidewalk. She was wrapped in a black overcoat and a long turquoise scarf. As she closed the door behind her and swept into the café, everyone looked. I half-stood to make sure she saw me, at the same time wincing as I recalled how cold and snarky she’d been at the library.

  “I’ve got less than an hour,” Meghan said by way of greeting. She unbuttoned her coat and sat down.

  “Did you send me a text?” I asked. She shook her head.

  “Actually, it’s rather funny,” said the man in the suit. He smiled. “The text was from me. Let me introduce myself, please.” He extended his hand again. “H. P. Lovecraft.”

  “Sure,” I rolled my eyes and finally shook hands; his was big and bony and shook mine firmly. “And I’m Charles Dickens,” I said.

  “Lovecraft” sm
iled. “It’s a long and complicated story,” he said. “Much longer and more complicated than anything I ever wrote. And please, call me Howard.”

  Now I knew why he’d struck me as familiar when I’d first sighted him on my front porch. I had looked up Lovecraft online only the day before. A skinny white guy from one of the New England states, with a long, pale face that didn’t quite fit together: his wide-set dark eyes had a warm and humorous look, but his thin lips, tightly pursed in his long narrow jaw, gave his lower face an anxious expression.

  “This is hilarious,” I said. Another thing I knew, or had a vague impression, about H. P. Lovecraft was that he had died a long time ago.

  The server came over and let us know if we wanted anything we had to order at the counter. “Of course.” The man in the suit looked at me. “Can I treat you to something, Nathan?”

  “You sure can. Hot chocolate, and maybe a muffin, please?” I began to warm up to this guy a little. He went up to the bar.

  I looked at Meghan, then at the bar where “HPL” was chatting with the server. Meghan looked at me.

  “H. P. Lovecraft?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Be nice. I know he’s quirky and has a face like an ant. But he came to see me at the library and I find him weirdly gauche and charming.”

  “If you didn’t text me, why are you here?”

  “After you put on your show at the library yesterday, Howard showed up. By the way ... just what was that all about? You weren’t very nice to your Resurrection Church buddies.”

  “They’re not my buddies. In fact, every time we meet, we hate each other just a little bit more.”

  “If that’s the case, they’re probably not someone you should prank.”

  “I wasn’t pranking them,” I sighed. “I was leading them away from you so nobody would get hurt.”

  “Oh. I never thought of that.” For a moment Meghan was speechless. “Well, thanks.”

  “Also because I wanted to annoy them. So why are you here?”

  “Howard said he was in town to find out what the Church is up to. So I guess you know all about this group, the Lovecraft Underground?”

  “I emailed them once.”

  She chuckled. “If everyone in the Underground is like Howard, it must be a real geekfest. LUG, give me a break!”

  “Well, this Lovecraft guy seems a lot nicer than the Proprietor and his goons.” I smiled politely, secretly hoping that LUG had more firepower than she gave them credit for.

  “The League of Unmarried Gentlemen,” she chuckled. “But Howard says you’re the one who alerted them to the latest activities of the Resurrection Church of the Ancient Gods. He also says that we have to act right away to avert a disaster of cosmic, earth-changing proportions. I’m not so sure about that, but I have some serious questions about this Resurrection Church – especially after yesterday. Dealing with people like that isn’t in my job description.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m going to get a latte.”

  We joined the alleged Mr. Lovecraft, and as we waited for Meghan’s coffee I sipped the hot chocolate that Lovecraft had bought me and was handed a carrot muffin.

  “Nate, here, was a big hit at the library the other day,” Meghan said.

  “Oh yes,” said Lovecraft distractedly. He was looking out the café window, where a group of young people – the guys in baseball caps, the girls in hoodies – rambled past, pushing each other and laughing.

  “I just wanted to look at the Necronomicon.”

  “I know,” she replied. “I’ve been told to call the cops immediately if those people show up again. You are not exactly welcome either; I wouldn’t come back soon if I were you. I explained to the security guards that those guys were chasing you. But they weren’t very happy about you jumping out onto the beams like that.”

  “I was going to get my butt kicked!”

  “There is a zero-tolerance policy toward using library property for parkour. Don’t worry, when this whole thing blows over, come and see me and we’ll talk to Circulation and Security and figure it all out.”

  “Remarkable,” Lovecraft cut in. “I’ve noticed this with young people here in Hamilton.”

  “What’s that?” Meghan and I looked at each other.

  “That group that just went by.” Lovecraft spoke like a bird watcher who had just logged a particularly rare species. “The young people here – they are so racially heterogeneous. Do you know what I mean? You don’t see a group that’s all white youngsters, or all black, or all Oriental ...”

  “Actually,” Meghan said, “we say Asian.”

  “... and I wonder.” Lovecraft peered at each of us intently, as if the question he was about to ask really worried him. “As these teenagers get older, isn’t anyone concerned ... isn’t there the danger of racial ... you know ... mixing?”

  Meghan and I looked at each other again. She burst into a loud guffaw.

  “Mixing?” she laughed. “I love it!”

  “Maybe we should go back to the table, and sit down,” I said.

  Meghan pointedly paid for her latte before Lovecraft could offer and we went back to the table.

  I thought this might be a good time to get back on topic, to announce that as far as the Resurrection Church went, I was way ahead of these people; to tell them what had happened to Dana, and about the unusual hidden abilities and other, I-guess-you’d-call-them, features possessed by the scooter lady called the Interlocutor. But unsure of how to take charge of a conversation with two older people I barely knew, I kept my mouth shut.

  Lovecraft was eating a cheese sandwich with lettuce and tomato. “I’m sure you’re skeptical,” he said, as mayonnaise dripped from his sandwich onto his plate, “so let me assure you that, of course, I make no claims to be the real H. P. Lovecraft – he passed away many years ago, tragically before his time – but a proxy H. P. Lovecraft. Every few years the Lovecraft Underground adjudicates a proxy Lovecraft, whose knowledge of the Great Old Ones qualifies him to act as an investigator – an advance scout, if you will – into the terrestrial conspiracies of the so-called ancient gods and their agents on this planet.”

  “Wow,” I said. “How did you get all this knowledge?”

  “So you believe in all this?” asked Meghan.

  “My real name,” continued Lovecraft, “is Timothy Kerwin, and believe me, I am only too eager to get back to my wife and children in Cleveland.” He finished off his sandwich, dabbed his lips with a napkin and, I couldn’t help but notice, ignored our questions completely.

  “Nate,” he said, “thanks for your email. It has put the Underground on red alert. A lot of the members, if you ask me, have been getting complacent. Sloppy. Decided that the Resurrection Church had given up, or even that the whole threat is just fantasy. The Underground’s membership had dropped. The edge had gone off our vigilance. Until we got your email.”

  “You didn’t waste any time getting here.” Here it was, Sunday, and I’d sent the email on Friday. Lovecraft had popped up in Hamilton the very next day.

  “So the Lovecraft Underground is sort of a vigilante group?” Meghan asked.

  “I prefer to think of them as researchers, separating the phantoms and rumours of fiction from the very real evidence that the Great Old Ones exist and are a threat.”

  “So, has there ever been a female Lovecraft?”

  Lovecraft’s eyes widened. His cup of tea stopped halfway to his mouth.

  “After all,” Meghan continued, “you said every few years the Underground chooses a proxy Lovecraft, and none of them are going to be the real H. P. Lovecraft anyway, so why not ...”

  “No,” Lovecraft said. “Of course not.”

  “This is, after all, the twenty-first century.”

  “I am aware of that.” There was a moment’s pause. “What a bizarre idea,” Lovecraft started to say. “It seems highly unlikely that a woman could ...”

  A wave of despair swept through me, and I sank into my chair. In the past couple of days, the world arou
nd me had become a much more dangerous place. I needed help anywhere I could get it.

  I sat up straight and cleared my throat. “Now just a sec, Meghan and, uh, Mr. Lovecraft. Howard. Not that gender issues aren’t really important. They really are. But I need help with some things. I’d like to tell you a story, and I’d like both of you to let me know what you think about it.”

  “I’m here to listen,” Meghan said. She looked at her watch. “But I don’t have much time.”

  “Me too,” said Lovecraft. “Ready to listen, and I have all the time in the world.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said. “But I warn you, this is a scary story.”

  “Don’t forget who you’re talking to, young man,” said Lovecraft. “Or at least, sort of talking to. If you can scare me, I’ll buy you another muffin.”

  I told them about my visit to the midnight game with Dana; about the creature we’d seen, and the man it carried away; about the immense shape in the sky that had reached down from the clouds, almost close enough to touch us; about the Proprietor, the cheering and chanting crowds.

  Lovecraft said, “It sounds as if the process is just starting, although I’m surprised at the appearance of that huge arthropodal creature; we call it an exanimator, although on its home planet it is known as a dritch. It seems as if Yog-Sothoth has gotten through to a few individuals, a new cult has formed and they’re starting to make these tentative attempts to establish a continuum threshold between worlds – and in the process, they’re enlisting new members.” He harrumphed. “But that’s not particularly scary. It simply illustrates one small facet of the situation we have on hand.”

  So I told him about coming to the library to see the Necronomicon, meeting Meghan and being chased by the Proprietor and his thugs ...

  “Goodness,” said Lovecraft. “That is pretty scary. Although it’s nothing like what all of us would suffer if ...”

  “Do you know a street person who’s called the Interlocutor?” I asked Meghan.

  “Sure. She asked to see the Necronomicon once, and I had to wrestle it off her to get it back. We all keep an eye on her when she comes into the library. The Resurrection Church types seem to all know her. Know here and hate her.” She shuddered. “She gives me the creeps.”