Arkham Nights

by Glynn Owen Barrass

  “What’s in this for you?” Towers asked. “Seems to me that you’re signing your own death warrant.”

  The flickering light reflected off tears welling up in the young man’s eyes.

  “Redemption,” he whispered.

  We left the boarded up shop with instructions to return to the Marsh House. Ronnie Marsh didn’t believe that anyone would go after us before dark but he warned us that our car would have likely been disabled by now and that we would probably need to find another way out of town. Fortunately, he provided us with an alternative. There was a rattletrap bus that went into Arkham every couple of days and the key was kept inside the unlocked vehicle. The hayburner was conveniently parked in a lot next door to Dagon Hall.

  “Do you think Marsh will still be alive to lead us to the girl?” Towers asked as we paused in the alley.

  “We’ll make do, with or without him.”

  Towers grinned. “Works for me... not that I’d want anything to happen to the kid.”

  “Sins of the fathers,” I replied. “Ain’t that the way it usually is?”

  “At least he’s doing something about it. That’s more than most people would do.”

  A wooden crate came crashing to the pavement, narrowly missing us by inches. I reached for my gun but Towers moved like greased lightning, aiming at one of the forms perched on the roof above us. His first shot thundered in the alley and a deformed figure went windmilling off the roof, to land in a heap on some garbage cans. My first shot winged another attacker, but it was obvious that we were outnumbered.

  “We got to get out of this alley!” I shouted over the racket.

  Crates were raining down on us and it was impossible to draw a bead on any of the bastards.

  “I’ve got a plan!” Towers shouted, before dropping another Innsmouth citizen.

  I was really eager to listen to Trevor’s plan but then the lights went out.

  I woke with a splitting headache and slowly opened my eyes, dreading whatever it was that I’d have to face.

  “That’s better,” said a familiar voice, just as a wet cloth was placed against my head.

  I squinted through the pain and said, “Marsh?”

  “The one and only.”

  I started to sit up but he put his hand on my chest. “Easy there, mister. You’re safe for now.”

  I looked around, at what appeared to be a quaintly decorated room.

  “Where’s Trevor? Where the hell am I?” I asked.

  “You’re in Marsh House,” he answered.

  “Hold on pal,” I growled. “If this is a trap...”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I took care of the desk clerk. I’m the only one that knows you’re here.”

  “Where’s Trevor?” I demanded, grabbing him by the shoulder. I saw him wince and relaxed my grip. “Sorry,” I said. “He’s my partner, is all.”

  It’s funny how things come to you at the damnedest of times. Once upon a time, I’d have rather shot Trevor on the spot than talk to the mug. Things changed, since I got to know him. I guess a guy never really gets to know another man but you can learn to like them, if you go through enough shit together. I didn’t plan on leaving town without him or the Abernacky girl. How did that old line go? ‘All for one...’

  “They’ve got your friend at Dagon Hall as well,” Marsh said. “I doubt that he and the girl are together. The ground beneath the place is honeycombed with rooms and passages.”

  “Can you get me in?”

  “Yes,” Marsh answered.

  I looked at him and said, “You’re one brave man, anyone ever tell you that?”

  “A man.” Marsh said, looking wistful. “That’s all I ever wanted to be.”

  Trevor was going to be pissed about the locals slashing his tires. At least Marsh had retrieved my partner’s bag of goodies from the trunk and brought it with him. I unloaded it on the bed while Marsh looked on.

  “Your friend must be a very violent man.”

  I grinned. “He likes to think of himself as cautious.”

  I began to count through Trevor’s stash of guns, his assortment of knives and his stash of DIY explosives, when I caught Marsh looking at our mini-armory. I offered him one of the automatics.

  “You trust me?” he asked.

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”

  He beamed as he pocketed the weapon.

  He was still grinning when the harpoon crashed through the window and buried itself in his chest. Stunned, I turned to the window but no one was there. The bad guys were onto me, somehow.

  “Son of a bitch!” I roared, rushing to check up on Marsh.

  He looked up at me, smiling through the pain. “There’s a map in my pocket... you’re going to need it... tell the girl I tried...”

  His words were lost in a long, choking gurgle. I knelt beside him and took his rough, scaly hand.

  “I’ll tell her that a man gave his life for her.”

  Marsh held my hand until the light fled from his eyes.

  I took the map from his pocket and covered him with a bedspread. It seemed like the good folks of Innsmouth had been having a merry old dance at our expense. I took the case from the bed and smiled.

  “Keep dancing while you can, you bastards,” I whispered. “It’s time to pay the piper.”

  Waking up tied to a chair was nothing new. It had happened to me, funnily enough, during my first encounter with the supernatural.

  Déjà vu is one major bitch.

  Back then, I’d been at the mercy of a man that could re-animate the dead, a quack by the name of Herbert West. With this in mind, waking up to the sight of Peter Lorre’s uglier older brother and his giant toad-thing boss was an improvement, all things considered.

  I checked the bonds that held my hands and found that they’d be wound as tight as a vice, so I decided to suck it up.

  I took a deep breath and steeled myself for the worst. I could handle the stabbing pain from my bruised eye, the sting from my split lips and bleeding gums, but getting a noseful of that awful Innsmouth stench was almost more than I could bear.

  I looked around and found that I was being held in a low, gray-bricked room, all glistening with damp. The only illumination came from a bare ceiling bulb and going by the dampness in the air and the grit under my feet, I could safely assume that I was held in some musty, forgotten old cellar in God knows where.

  Still, it suited my captors well.

  One was a big six Innsmouth specimen, all balding and chinless with those bug-eyes and flakey skin that Barnes and I had gotten to know far too well. He had on a two-sizes-too small dark gray suit, his lumpy head and overly long arms making him look like some troll straight out of a fairy tale. He wore a rawhide belt complete with gun holsters, each bearing a big, mean-looking Colt between pouches dotted with copper shells.

  It wasn’t the guns that scared me though; it was the look of pure malice that came from the big cheese, all the way at the other side of the room.

  The big cheese sat behind Lorre Senior on a throne-like seat carved from dull white coral, its skin looking all slick and black from under the ends of its ragged sleeves and neckline. It was dressed in a long crimson robe, covered in weird gold symbols and fishy-looking patterns. Its paws, so much like the bloated hands of a week-old corpse, were covered in scales, with claws sticking out from the tips.

  Its face bore the Innsmouth look in all its naked glory; a scaly and rubbery face, sloping to a pair of perfectly smooth holes where the ears should be. Slitted pink gills flared from its long neck and its eyes were two solid black pebbles that glared at me with an alien malice.

  The creature stopped, halfway through talking to its deformed cronie and peeled back its lips to reveal multiple rows of jagged white teeth. I guess that’s what passed for a grin, as far as it was concerned.

  I didn’t have to speak their gobbledygook language to know what was going on. This wasn’t an interrogation. After a brief conversation, Lorre Senior’s calloused fists me
rcilessly knocked me unconscious.

  They hadn’t bothered to ask me any questions.

  Obviously he’d continued beating me while I was out. I could tell, by running my tongue over the chipped mess that used to be the left side of my jaw and the bloody mess I’d made all over my shirt.

  I’d like to say I’d had worse, but I’d be lying.

  The big toad was speaking to my interrogator in that Innsmouth gobbledygook when I came to. It stopped mid-sentence and Lorre Senior turned to look at me, his face twisted in rage.

  “The master wants to know what you’re doing here, boy,” he said. “Tell me, so I can kill you.”

  He released one revolver from his holster, pressed it against my forehead and said “Speak and I will make it quick.”

  He hadn’t mentioned Barnes. Maybe the old slugger had slipped away from their ambush. I swallowed some blood and then said, “What are you talking about? I’m just a fish-peddler; honest.”

  The big cheese chuckled: a loud, sinister purr that made me shudder. Lorre Senior didn’t seem to get the joke though and settled for smacking me across the head with his revolver.

  The impact nearly took my head off. My vision wobbled, everything going hazy before snapping back into gonzo focus.

  I saw my old trainer, Spiky Joe, five years dead from cancer, standing next to Lorre Senior, screaming down at me over the din of an invisible crowd.

  “Come on, Two-Gun,” he said, his eyes pleading. “You got this mook.”

  I wanted to smack Tompkin one right across the mouth, but it couldn’t have been him, in the ring. We’d fought fifteen bouts, worn ourselves down to the bone before I finally got the son of a bitch to give up the ghost.

  Everything seemed like a dream, all bent the wrong way and mangled. The cellar around me bled into a ring, surrounded by ropes. I looked at Tompkin and there he was, leering down at me and waving a gun in my face.

  “I’ll kill you!” he snarled.

  “I’ll die!” I laughed, spitting blood as I spoke.

  I looked back and there was Joe, the lights of the arena glistening across his bald, black head. He egged me on, howling like a madman but I just couldn’t find the strength to go on.

  I’d gone fifteen rounds with Tompkin and was dead on my feet long before the bell had rung. My knees had turned to jelly. One of my eyes was already swollen shut and the other was going.

  There was no way I could go on. Hell, I couldn’t even put up my hands.

  “Come on, man,” Joe shouted. “Just take a swing, he’s dead on his feet!”

  “I can’t do it, Joe,” I muttered through my shattered teeth, my split lips turning every word into agony. I had no idea where my gum shield had gone.

  “Bullshit,” he said, so close to me I could drown in his big, sad eyes. “I didn’t come back here just to have you quit on me. Suck it up!”

  The bell rang. Tompkin came at me ready to bury that big gun of his right into my skull.

  I tried to raise my hands but there was nothing doing. Joe was fading away, whisked into nothing and I knew that I was going to have to get off my ass and on with the job.

  I flexed the muscles in my arms, drawing strength from everywhere at once.

  My arms tore free, tearing away at wood and hemp as they went, showering me in splinters. I howled like the Devil himself, as I landed a swift left hook at Tompkin’s fat pudgy nose.

  The crowd roared all around me.

  I was back in the cellar, my arms aching like bastards. Lorre Senior was doubled over in front of me, bleating like an animal as he clutched at his ruined nose.

  Grabbing at his pistol, I reached for the other in its holster, before giving them a single hard twist. He let go, so I fired a single shot into his belly, the thunder of the gun sending the crowd back to the nonsense mist it had sprung out of. All that was left was the dull roar in my aching head and the sound of that ugly bastard bawling as he died.

  It would be a good while before he died. Plenty of time to knock that fish-faced big cheese off his throne and on his ass.

  It looked almost terrified, before it pounced. A long golden blade flashed in its paw as it lashed at me, aiming for the jugular.

  The big cheese was fast, but wasn’t no Two-Gun Towers. In the blink of an eye, I cocked back the hammers and pulled both triggers at once, turning its howling face into red and green mush. It fell back onto its throne, staining the coral with whatever stinking gunk it had instead of blood.

  “Ooorah!” I snarled with glee.

  There was no time to waste; the ring from the echoing gun blasts had barely faded, before it was replaced by a set of hurried footsteps closing in from behind the door.

  I turned, only to find my feet still tied to the chair legs. I tucked one of the guns into my waistband before bending to let myself loose. With that done with, I twisted around to greet my new challengers.

  The door was a worm-eaten, wooden thing, about as old as Davy Jones’s locker. Someone was scampering frantically for it, getting closer. I cocked back both barrels and took a deep breath to steady myself.

  You better believe that Two-Gun Towers was out for blood.

  I made my way through the burrow-like tunnels that wormed beneath Dagon Hall. Marsh’s map had been a godsend and my goose would’ve been cooked a long time ago if he hadn’t stashed Tower’s miniature armory away for me. I’d emptied three clips into the fishmen that went after me through Innsmouth’s twisting streets and I knew that there would be more a’coming before long, hot on my trail as they followed the corpses.

  I was close to the underground entrance when I heard gunfire echoing out from the depths. My head still pounded and my knees were halfway turned to jelly but I knew that Towers and the girl had to be close. My cheap wristwatch had been smashed but one look at the night sky told me it must be about midnight. The beam of my flashlight danced across a wooden door and I slowed my pace. Approaching cautiously, I took a deep breath, gripped my gun and booted my way in.

  The door flew off its hinges and I almost fell flat on my face, only to find myself staring up at a pair of barrels held by Trevor Towers himself.

  “Again with the shooting...” I muttered.

  Towers tried to grin with what was left of the red ruin that used to be his mouth.

  “Got the girl yet?” he said.

  “I just got here.”

  “What about Marsh?”

  “He died... saving my life.”

  “Another favor we owe the bastard,” Trevor said.

  I pulled myself up on my feet and said, “At least he died knowing that he did right by folks.”

  “More than most of us can hope for, I reckon.”

  I looked at the piles of twitching meat that lay in the room. “Who were those guys, you think?”

  “Who gives a shit. We got a woman needs saving,” he answered.

  I was too glad to get out of that stuffy cell; those two looked worse dead than they ever did alive. I was almost glad for the damp dankness of the tunnel Barnes led us through.

  Made up of greasy square slabs, it stretched out from the door at an angle and sloped down on our left. The walls were coated in layers of slick moisture, with a row of dim bulbs attached to a thick black wire trailing across the curved ceiling.

  “Nice digs,” I said.

  Barnes said, “Bet you’d fit right in with your face the way it looks now.”

  I was about to give Barnes a piece of my mind, when we heard someone running up the corridor. There was the sound of footfalls and voices barking out what had to be marching orders in the Innsmouth gobbledygook.

  Barnes swore and led us out of the tunnel. Before long, we were running deeper underground.

  “Barnes? Do you even know where you’re headed?” I said. When Barnes didn’t answer, I hissed, “Barnes, for Pete’s sake, where are we going?” We turned left at the next intersection when he said, “Ronnie hasn’t steered us wrong so far. The map should take us right to where they’re keeping
Abernacky’s girl.”

  The tunnel sloped down a slippery decline, and we slowed down, holding to the walls for dear life. The Innsmouth posse seemed to be getting closer, their rabid screeches getting more distinct by the second.

  We passed by a closed wooden door just before it came crashing open. Barnes stopped in mid-run, pivoting on his heels like a ballerina from hell. I turned around, only to see a massive, black-skinned fish-man snarling at us.

  Now there was a face even a mother couldn’t love.

  It crouched in the corridor, its misshapen head scraping across the ceiling. Its sleek skin was pitch-black, save for the white streak that ran across its belly. Its eyes hung in the air like free-floating pools of silver. Letting out a whine that soon turned into a roar of anger, we watched its lips pull back to reveal two rows of jagged yellow teeth.

  We pulled our triggers in unison, my shots going a little wild. I was coming down from my adrenaline high, and my hands shook something awful.

  The fish-thing took our bullets like they were nothing, even as they tore into his scaly flesh. I’d just about emptied my guns when Barnes shifted his aim slightly and went for its eye just as the thing got a little too close for comfort. The bullets tore into its face and buried themselves into its skull, making the fish-thing drop dead in its tracks.

  Barnes spat, and kicked at its head savagely. “Stay down you rotten, stinking bastard!”

  “So I guess we just go for the head?” I suggested. Barnes nodded.

  Checking my guns, I realized that I was fresh out of ammo with the legions of Innsmouth almost breathing down our necks.

  As if reading my mind, Barnes handed me the green canvas sack he’d had slung over his shoulder. It was my stash, with every single gun and bullet in its rightful place.

  “Hope you got enough ammo in there for everyone.”

  “And then some,” I said, breaking into a big, snarling grin.