The Broken Hours: A Novel of H. P. Lovecraft

by Jacqueline Baker

  The horror magazine stuck up over the lip of the trash can. “The Albino Deaths.” What rot. Life, in my experience, provides all we need of horror.

  I must have slept. The sound of church bells roused me, ringing against the cold windowglass, and I wondered if it was Sunday. I’d lost my grasp on the passing of days, on the most elementary order, as if I had entered some void in which the laws of time and space were meaningless. There was a kind of comfort in such drift, I was aware. The chiming of the church bells ceased.

  I lay brooding still over the events of the previous day. I wanted answers, a reasonable explanation to it all, to this mistake. I felt almost certain Sister Clementine was in error. It was too macabre. Too inexplicable. The woman was clearly senile and should have been relieved long ago of her responsibilities there. I felt I must get to the bottom of it all; I did not relish the thought, but I resolved to return to Butler and settle the matter clearly, to demand an audience with my employer’s mother.

  As I lay in bed I could hear voices, silvery in the street. A child’s trill and the slamming of automobile doors. How remote it all seemed. How ethereal. The circumnavigatory light of the attic room.

  I closed my eyes again, just for a few moments. I was not ready to face it. For if Sister Clementine was not mistaken—but this I did not wish to consider.

  2

  I rapped for some time at Flossie’s door. But she appeared to have gone out again. The cellar door stood closed, the potted palms in their places, ordinary, as if none of the events from two nights previous had happened. I felt the wound crusted over on my temple. That, at least, was real.

  I rapped once more at her door, just to be certain, but there was no answer.

  The house was silent around me as I stood with one hand on the opened padlock. The steel felt cool to the touch. I pressed my ear to the door, then got down on my hands and knees and tried to look beneath it, but it was impossible. I could see nothing.

  If she did not wish to see me, very well. But surely she did not need to hide herself. I wrote a hasty note inquiring after her health and slipped it under the door, then made my way hurriedly out into the sunlight.

  Sister Clementine blinked her eyes in the antique light.

  Back again?

  She nodded to one of her underlings, dispatching the girl post-haste. I leaned with both hands on the polished desk, firmly.

  I’d like to speak with someone in charge, please.

  I am in charge.

  Then I would like to speak with a doctor.

  About Mrs. Lovecraft. Your employer’s mother.

  I’m afraid I must insist upon speaking with a doctor.

  In fact I’ve already sent for one. Phillips, of course, was her maiden name. When she first came here. Sarah Susan Phillips. She was a maiden once, too, Sister Clementine said, displaying again those impressive teeth. They all were.

  Sister Clementine, a voice said sharply behind us.

  Ah, Sister Clementine said. Here is your doctor. And disappeared in a slow, stiff flapping of black down the hall.

  I turned to see with some relief the friendly older gentleman I had encountered on the grounds upon my first visit.

  The doctor extended his hand. I’m glad to see you again. I am Dr. Tinseley. I was hoping we could have a word.

  Were you?

  Indeed.

  May I ask about what?

  Why, the doctor said, smiling easily, as if we were old friends, about the building, of course. The architecture. You had some questions for me. Don’t you remember?

  We walked down one of the dark halls, our shoes echoing on the polished floors. The doctor moved briskly, swinging his arms, as if we were out for a bit of bracing exercise. The orange lights shone on his spectacles when he turned to smile at me over his shoulder. I tried to keep pace, to breathe shallowly of that bleach-wax stench, to not look from side to side, into the glass windows of the closed doors which lined both sides of the corridor, afraid of what I would see there.

  At the end of the hallway, an abandoned wheelchair stood in the cold light from the window. We were almost alongside it before I noticed there was someone sitting in it. A girl, a child, perhaps. Her swollen head, listing over to one side, against her tiny shoulder. She wore an absurdly ruffled gown of some velvety fabric, and someone had taken a good deal of care in combing her sparse blond hair into two grotesque pigtails, as if to draw more attention still to the awful, ballooned head. On her curled hands, terrible, garish rings. I could not honestly tell if she was woman or child.

  Polly, I thought the doctor said, greeting the girl. But he seized the wheelchair and spun it round to an open doorway, calling, Louise, Louise!

  Yes, Doctor, came a voice from inside the room, and a young nurse poked her head round the corner.

  Eh, the doctor said. I thought this was Louise’s ward.

  Louise is off sick.

  Nothing catching, I hope.

  I, the nurse began, glancing at me, don’t know.

  What’s this doing out here?

  Doctor?

  He rolled the chair—and the girl, Polly—toward the nurse.

  I was just changing—

  Well, mind you don’t, he said crisply. Policies.

  Yes, Doctor, the nurse said, pulling the chair back inside the room and shutting the door.

  The doctor set off again. Policies, he said, policies.

  I followed.

  Your office is a long way, I said, to make conversation.

  But the doctor only looked over his shoulder at me again.

  Two orderlies passed with an enormous metal cart piled with towels and linens that stank of bleach and, worse, a repellent humanness. Not blood or urine or fecal matter, not sweat, but something both less and more bodily; it was something like foul breath which permeated the air. I felt my lip curl in disgust.

  Behind the orderlies was the pleasant, plump nurse I’d met on my first morning, Ivy. She was holding the arm of an elderly woman, overdressed for the outdoors, as if she were a child, a thick knitted hat plugged on her head.

  Ivy, I said, slowing as we passed. Hello.

  Though I was certain she recognized me, the nurse looked quickly away.

  But the woman in the knitted hat grinned back at me.

  I’m getting out, she said.

  In his office, crammed with books and stacks of file folders and dirty coffee cups, the doctor held out a sheet of paper upon which someone had written some hasty notes.

  What is this? I did not take it from him, averse as I was to touching anything in that place, to breathing, even, that tainted air. But the doctor kept holding it and so I reached out and took it with the tips of my fingers.

  Please, he said, gesturing to a chair across from his desk, sit. I’ve done a bit of research, as you can see. You piqued my curiosity. I found out a few things, architecturally. The building is not a “true colonial,” for instance. He smiled.

  I sat in the chair, pretending to glance over the notes, nodding with false interest. Very interesting. Very interesting, indeed. Thank you, Doctor. I handed the paper back to him, unread.

  Of course you may keep that.

  I hesitated, then folded it into my overcoat pocket. Sorry to have put you to any trouble.

  Not at all.

  It was only a passing interest.

  He waited, studying me across the desk. He seemed to struggle with something, or expect something from me.

  Many thanks, I repeated, and patted my overcoat pocket awkwardly.

  He smiled.

  Bit of an accident? he asked.

  I’m sorry?

  He tapped a finger against his own temple, and remembering, I raised my hand to the scab there. It had become unhinged at one corner, where I’d been worrying it, and it stung afresh at the touch of my fingertips.

  Yes, I said. A slip on the stairs, I’m afraid. Careless of me.

  These things happen.

  We sat a moment, nodding at each other.
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  In fact, I began, I was hoping to speak with you about another matter.

  Is that so, Mr….

  Crandle.

  Crandle. You may speak to me about anything. Anything at all. You will find we are quite accommodating here at Butler.

  It is concerning one of your patients.

  That would be your employer’s mother, I take it.

  You’ve been speaking with Sister Clementine.

  She insists upon it. He laughed easily.

  I must ask, I said. Sister Clementine led me to believe—

  He held up a palm. May I ask you something first?

  Certainly.

  He leaned forward across his desk. How well do you know the … family?

  He is my employer, as I say. Not well at all. I’ve only just started there, just a little more than a week now.

  I see. So you never actually met the woman yourself, then. You never met Mrs. Lovecraft?

  I can’t say I ever have, nor for that matter could I say as much of her son. Not really. Not what you’d say met.

  The doctor stared back at me, waiting.

  It’s been a confusing time, you see, I said. I’m just with him temporarily, from the agency. And my employer is not exactly what one would call, shall we say, forthcoming. And then he has this funny tic, of writing under false names, dozens of them, so that for some days, I wasn’t sure exactly who he was. And then he’s been quite ill, so I’ve scarcely seen him. Haven’t seen him at all, come to think of it. It’s rather an unusual situation, I added. Writers, you know.

  Of course, the doctor said, of course. It only stands to reason. Things can at times become very confusing. No one knows that better than I.

  Something in me, some alarm, went off. The doctor was, I thought, not being merely odd, but disingenuous—worse, carefully disingenuous. As if he were trying to glean some information about my employer from me.

  He rose from his desk then and came around the other side and leaned there, crossing his ankles, in a pose of false ease.

  Well, Mr….

  Crandle, I finished, with some annoyance.

  Crandle. He leaned forward and narrowed his eyes at me. May I ask, how much do you know of Mrs. Lovecraft’s condition?

  Nothing at all, really.

  Perhaps I could enlighten you.

  I would be only too grateful.

  Well, it’s quite an interesting family, you see, he said, going back around his desk and sitting. He lifted a glass decanter. Water?

  I shook my head.

  He poured some out into a glass anyway and pushed it toward me across the desk. Quite an aristocratic family, able to trace their lineage all the way back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, or so they claim. This kind of thing is important here in Providence, you no doubt are aware, so they were quite a prominent family. Wealthy, too, her father, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, having made a fortune as an industrialist, I believe. They lived on one of the large estates on Angell Street, quite a mansion in its day, I am told, in that modest New England way. Orchards and fountains and carriage houses. A library housing some twenty thousand books, apparently, belonging to old Whipple. Unfortunately, it was all lost, as many fortunes were in those days. Everything.

  He poured himself a glass of water and drank. He seemed to be waiting for some response from me.

  Shame, I said.

  He set down the glass.

  Yes. The mother, Robie, was dead by then, and Whipple and his daughters, as well as your …

  Employer?

  Yes, your employer, were forced to give it up, the old estate, and move to rather diminished quarters. Old Whipple died not long after; the strain was too much for the old man. He left his three daughters what little he had. And so it went, the Phillips women had fallen hard, and your employer, then but a child, would have felt the loss keenly. No doubt.

  He pushed his chair back from his desk, crossed his legs the other way, and I repressed the urge to do the same.

  But, I said, what of his father? Surely the mother was not entirely on her own.

  Ah. In fact, she was, then. Apart from her sisters. Terrible business. It sometimes goes this way. You see, your employer’s mother was not the first of her immediate family to be a patient here.

  No?

  Her husband, that would be—he consulted a folder spread open on his desk and I tried not to reveal my own interest in the papers—Winfield, was his name. Funny fellow, as I recall. What one would call a poseur. I remember him well. An Englishman, you’d put money on it, though he was born and raised in upstate New York. English parentage, I believe, but he was one to put on airs, as they say. At any rate, Winfield preceded his wife by some fifteen years. He was brought in under complete restraint, I’m afraid. You see he’d been away on business, staying in some hotel somewhere or other, I forget just where, when someone in a neighbouring room reported hearing terrible screaming.

  Something in me chilled.

  When they found him, he was completely out of control, claiming his wife was being assaulted by someone in an upstairs room. There was no reasoning with him. He had gone, as they say, completely insane.

  Good lord, I said. What happened?

  He was in and out of this hospital for some five years—mostly in—sometimes better, sometimes worse, as it seems to go, often, in the early stages.

  Worse, how?

  Hallucinations.

  I lifted my glass, drank carefully.

  When he was finally admitted for the last time, he hung on only some three months or so.

  He died here?

  I’m afraid so. General paresis is listed as the cause of death. I’ve checked the files. Of course, this was all some time ago. Almost forty years.

  So long.

  Indeed. His wife visited him here, but there is no evidence among our visitor files that his son—that would be your friend—

  My employer, I corrected.

  Forgive me, your employer. No record that he ever did, though his father was, as I’ve said, here quite some time. His wife, Sarah Susan did not arrive as a long-term patient until—he checked his folder again—1919. She had, how shall I say it, episodes, before that, of course.

  What sort of episodes?

  Hallucinations. Much as her husband had. Susie was always what one might call a weak sister, of spirit, mind, and body. Dramatic, you know. The least toothache was a tragedy. She was a born sufferer. And a woman of narrow intelligence, limited interests. I first met her as a young woman. She was brought in by Whipple and Robie. She’d been having difficulties, trouble sleeping, terrible headaches, she had become reclusive and, her parents thought, strange. Behaving strangely, is what I mean, he said, as if that needed clarification. She was here only a short time, then. I was not her doctor. I had, in fact, only just arrived myself, fresh out of medical school. It seems a lifetime ago now, and I guess it was. But Susie was only very young, perhaps seventeen or eighteen. Pretty, in a way. But silly, also, if you will forgive me, in a rather needful way. Seeking attention, always. She had an inordinately pale complexion, quite the whitest I’d ever seen. Achieved, I am told, by drinking arsenic. At any rate, it soon became clear there was nothing wrong with her, or nothing we could detect at the time. She seemed healthy enough, mentally.

  He put inordinate stress upon the final word, and I took that he meant her problems were of a physical nature. I was tempted to inquire, but he pressed on.

  After we released her, she spent several months in reclusion, I understand. When she finally emerged, she was deeply changed. Less silly and frivolous. She was, of course, always a bit odd. But after Winfield died, she became a recluse again, this time permanently. People saw her sometimes lurking around her yard, hiding. The hallucinations grew worse. This is how it often goes. She began to see, it seemed, creatures rushing out from behind buildings, from the corners of rooms at dusk. Shadow people, she called them.

  Good god.

  Mmm. He folded his fingers beneath his chin and
stared at me, waiting. She grew worse after her admittance; it was quite rapid. It was these creatures, you understand, these shadow people. Monsters.

  How terrible, I said. It must have been difficult—

  On your friend.

  My employer, yes.

  In fact, it was. Susie had what one might call an unhealthy fixation on her son. She babied him terribly, as an infant. She dressed him in pretty nightgowns, let his hair grow long as a girl’s. He was often mistaken for such, a little girl. It was quite a battle when he got older and was teased by the other children. Finally, when he was already six, she relented and sat next his barber chair, weeping, I am told, while his hair was cut. Even then she wouldn’t let him out of her sight lest something should befall him, the least bump or bruise. Then, all at once, she was repelled by him. She told people in passing he was monstrous, deformed, too terrible to look upon. She could not bear to be touched by him. She wanted him hidden away.

  Because he was a monster, I said.

  The doctor eyed me curiously. He has spoken to you about this?

  No. I looked up at him. No, we don’t discuss such things. It is just something he said once.

  After a moment he nodded. Well. She believed, yes, that he was deformed. Hideously so.

  And? I said. Is he?

  He eyed me narrowly and leaned back again in his chair. Might I ask about your … personal interest in the matter.

  I wouldn’t say personal, I said, affronted.

  I don’t mean to pry, the doctor offered.

  Of course I’m concerned.

  For your employer.

  Yes.

  He’s had a bad time. More than anyone should have to bear, when you think of it.

  But how terrible, I said. How terrible for him. His own mother. And his father already insane.

  This family history now shed an awful light upon him. I considered speaking to the doctor about it, but something in his mannerisms, in his watchfulness, made me hesitate.