Reanimatrix

by Pete Rawlik

  “We told the boy that his mother, my wife, Laura, died giving birth to him. That wasn’t true, of course, though perhaps it is better that he thinks that way. No child should know that their mother ran from the delivery room, madness in her eyes and voice, screaming about dreams, about monsters, about giving birth to monsters. No child should know that their father had to plead with their mother to come down off a bridge, the icy wind whipping through the thin linens that she was wrapped in, blood and fluid and something else clinging to her leg. No child should know that his mother jumped into the nearly frozen river and that try as they might the police were unable to recover the body. No child should know these things, and so we have never told him.”

  I stared at him in disbelief as he paused but for a moment, and then once more began to speak. “I raised him as best I could. We moved into a residence hotel, me, Patrick, and Norah. He’s a smart boy, goes to the Latin School. I worked hard, made sure the boy was provided for, perhaps too hard. A few weeks ago I had a heart attack. The prognosis is not good. The specialists have given me a year, maybe two, no more than that. Patrick is going to be a very rich young man, but I wanted to see if I could give him more than that. He should have a family, people to look after him.”

  “I was in Boston last week, to see Laura’s parents and to try to make arrangements for them to become Patrick’s guardians.” His eyes became puffy, and his voice started to break. “They wouldn’t even meet with me. They had their lawyer handle the discussion. They had no interest in seeing Patrick, none at all; in fact, they were offering a sizeable amount to have me keep the boy away. I was stunned, confused, and disgusted. I demanded an explanation, and was provided one, much to my chagrin. The Hornes were not Laura’s biological parents; she had been adopted. The lawyer showed me a certificate from The Ward Home for Children in Bolton, Massachusetts. I shrugged, what difference did that make? Apparently it made a significant amount, at least in the minds of the Hornes. They had been told that Laura had been the daughter of a Swedish millworker, and that her features were common amongst those people. It is true that dark hair and sloe eyes are often a Scandinavian feature, and so the Hornes adopted the child, proud of her Northern European ancestry, which was similar to their own. In the last few years, however, certain irregularities concerning children at The Ward Home had come to light. Paperwork was falsified, and ancestries often simply created out of nothing but fancy. According to one matron who could no longer tolerate the situation, many of the children weren’t from Bolton at all, but rather from farther east. It was suggested that many of the infants were from villages on the coast, where seafaring men of questionable morals often came back from voyages with wives of exotic natures. The implication was plain: Laura was not of Swedish descent, but rather was probably a child of a low-born shipmate and his swarthy Pacific island bride. The Hornes wanted nothing to do with her, or her child. They had no proof, of course, there was no proof either way, but the rumors were enough, and the embarrassment had driven the two elderly and genteel Bostonians into seclusion until the whole matter was forgotten. They would be leaving for an extended stay in London, and having Patrick with them or waiting for their return was too much of a reminder that they may have been played for fools. I took their bribe; it didn’t matter to me that it was blood money: Patrick might need it one day. I took it and went immediately to Knickerbocker’s and set up a trust.”

  “Patrick will be well looked after. My sister is a spoiled child who never grew up, but I know that she will take care of Patrick, and make sure that he grows to be a fine man. She’ll have oversight, of course; Knickerbocker’s has assigned a man to administer the trust, to make sure the boy is not taken advantage of. It isn’t what I wanted, but it’ll have to do. I just wish I could do more.”

  He paused and settled; this time I was able to speak. “But why travel to Arkham?” As soon as I said the words I knew the answer, for I had read the reports concerning The Ward Home myself.

  He harrumphed. “Arkham is merely a waypoint, Mr. Peaslee. I will do some research there, and then I will make some inquiries, some demands in Bolton. The Hornes’ lawyer didn’t just give me money; he also gave me the paperwork that he had uncovered concerning Laura’s birth and adoption. There is a curious notation on those forms. A note I don’t understand. One that has disturbed me, and scratched at the back of my mind for the last few days. It won’t let me go, so I’m going to pursue it. I’m not long for this world, but there is a mystery here. A mystery concerning the woman I love; a woman who has been dead almost a decade, and whom I still love more than my own life. I have to know. I have to know who Barnabas Marsh of Innsmouth is and why his name is written on my wife’s birth certificate!”

  This last outburst seemed to drain the man and he fell into a fit of wheezing and coughing. He clutched at his chest, and I made a move to call the waiter, but he waved me off. “Just too much excitement, Mr. Peaslee, I’ll be fine after a short nap.”

  With that the man seemed to shrink back into his coat, laid his head in the corner where the window met the seat, and closed his eyes. I had been dismissed, without even a word. This, I suppose, is the prerogative of the dying man. I wished him well, and he softly muttered his gratitude. I wish I could sleep on trains, I spend enough time on them, but it is a skill I never acquired. Instead I’ve sat down and filled my journal with these words, the tale of Mr. Dennis, or, The Man on the Train. Why I bothered I wasn’t sure, but an investigation of The Ward Home and the involvement of Barnabas Marsh might be in order. There was a warrant out for Barnabas Marsh, the Feds had raided Innsmouth some months earlier for rum running, and hints of worse. Barnabas had been identified as a ringleader, but had escaped capture. In my mind I hoped that a dying man might have the drive to find and expose the fugitive. I had learned the hard way that dying men have peculiar, nearly supernatural motivations, and to whatever dark and hidden place Barnabas Marsh had fled I supposed it mightn’t be far enough to hide him from the prying eyes of Edwin Dennis. After all, who or what could stop a dying man in love with a dead woman?

  CHAPTER 8

  “The Loss of Megan Halsey”

  From the Journal of Robert Peaslee April 9 1928

  They were waiting for me at the station, Copper and Bacon, patrolmen who worked the river. They stood there on the platform like two shadows in the fog waiting for the sun to burn them away, but dawn was hours away and the lamps of the train, as bright as they were, were insufficient to the task. As I stepped off the train they came for me and mumbled something about being ordered to fetch me by Chief Nichols. I didn’t ask how Nichols knew that I was out of town, or how he knew on which train I was returning. I accepted it as just another quirk of living in a small town. I grabbed my travel bag and with as few words as possible fell into step behind the two beat cops. Bacon had the odor of cigarettes and cheap perfume about him, while Copper reeked of garlic; a byproduct of his Italian wife’s cooking. Neither one was pleasant to smell, but compared to the rest of the boys who worked the harbor, they were a regular bouquet. I didn’t need to ask why they were there and they didn’t say. When the chief sends two men to meet me at the rail station in the wee hours of the morning it can only mean one thing: someone is dead, and Chief Nichols would rather have me deal with it than have it fall on his shoulders.

  I can’t say I blame him. Given that choice I would do the same. It’s not as if I didn’t have a history, didn’t have the experience. This is the job I signed on to do; no sense in whining about it when it has to be done. I never planned for this to happen. I never woke up and said, “Today, I’ve decided to become a detective, but only work on the truly bizarre cases.” I never set out to do this, but somehow or another, the crimes that no one else would touch became the norm in my life. My brother, Wingate, always the psychotherapist, would trace my attraction to these odd cases directly to what happened to Father. I will admit there may be some truth to his suspicions, but in the end the why doesn’t matter, it won’t cha
nge what needs to be done, or that I need to do it.

  I thought Bacon and Copper would bundle me into a car. Instead we continued on foot, turning south on Garrison, crossing over the soot-stained viaduct over the rail, and then made our way over the Miskatonic River itself. The wind whipping off the water was bitterly cold, and tore through my coat and wormed its way down my neck and across my back, making me shiver as I crossed. The river reflected back the amber lights of the bridge and the streets. The dark waters made the reflected light pale and gray and played with the reflections and shadows of the warehouses that lined the other end of the causeway. As we made our way north on River Street I watched shadowy figures step back into darkened alleyways and doors. The Docks have a well-deserved reputation for smuggling and other less-savory activities, and I’m sure my presence made the men here nervous, just as I was sure that Copper and Bacon represented no threat to the factions of crime, organized or not, that had taken root there.

  I was led past the waterfront, and I could feel the following eyes of old men haggard from age and wind and the salt of the sea. They were preparing their boats to head out at first light. Fishing takes a toll on men, more so than other professions, I think. That there were even fishing boats in Arkham was odd, but ever since the local shops had severed ties with Innsmouth another supplier of fish had to be found, and while Kingsport would have made more sense, that town had long ago turned most of its harbor over to pleasure craft. Consequently, despite the Miskatonic being a treacherous waterway and not one to be traversed without caution, a ragtag fleet of fishing boats had come to thrive in Arkham.

  At Dock Twenty-Three, we turned and moved out over the river. This was a cargo pier, and still vacant of workmen, but piled high with barrels and crates and the turns of ropes that were the stock of life on the docks. As I walked down the creaking boards, gulls, annoyed by my presence, cackled as they waddled out of my way, and I was not sure whether they would continue on their slow walk away from me, or on a whim turn and attack my ankles with hard beaks, sharpened on the boney carcasses of cod and tempered in battles with blue crabs and wayward clams. The dock was a lonely place, cut off from the others by distance and darkness and the hulking ships that clung to the pilings like spiders in the wind. As we reached the end of the pier I saw there were three men huddled there around a single weak light, two fishermen and another patrolman, whom I knew, by the name of Roberts. They were standing over a large indistinct mass that glistened in the light. I could see the tangle of worn and tattered ropes and torn netting that had wrapped themselves around a body. Of course it was a body; why else would I have been summoned. As I drew closer Roberts flicked on another light and played it over the victim so I could see what I was dealing with.

  “Watermen found her floating in the river about three hours ago,” explained Roberts. “The nets got tangled round on the pylon.” I nodded. I didn’t believe that to be the whole truth, but whatever the two watermen were hiding likely had little to do with the body. The looks on their faces told me more than I needed to know. They had found it, made the mistake of fishing it out, and then had further compounded their error by reporting it. Busting them for smuggling, or poaching or whatever they were doing, wasn’t going to help solve my case. I let them keep whatever secrets they were hiding.

  The body was that of a young and fit woman. She was dressed in a heavy coat, over men’s trousers, shirt, and a pair of leather boots, but all of this was covered with filth, mud, detritus, and the like. In fact, there was amidst the material a large quantity of red clay, which I recognized as originating in the upper reaches of the river past Dean’s Corners near Aylesbury. The implication being that the body had entered the river miles upstream, and then taken days, perhaps even weeks to work its way past Arkham and Kingsport. Days in the water, but as I moved the body it showed no signs of being waterlogged. It was not bloated, nor did the skin show the discoloration I expected. There was no damage to the body either; one would expect a body moving downriver to accumulate wounds through simply colliding with the river bottom, rocks, and branches, but no such injuries were present. Also absent were any scavengers; I saw no leeches, no crayfish, and no crabs. Nothing at all had seemed to worry the body or take an interest in it. It was all very unusual. As I continued to examine the corpse I found no evidence of rigor, suggesting that she had been dead for more than two days. However, as I lifted her shirt I found there was also no postmortem lividity, no purple or red bruising indicating where the blood had settled in the body. The lack of rigor or lividity suggested that she was newly dead, perhaps only two hours, but the accumulated material suggested otherwise, and it had been more than three hours since she had been hauled up. It was all very strange, but I was sure that once the coroner took a look at the body he would have a logical explanation for all of these contradictions. Perhaps the water temperature along with the constant motion of the body in the water had somehow retarded the normal postmortem processes.

  It was then, my examination nearly finished, that I turned my attention to the face. Even in the darkness, her face and hair covered with filth, I could see that she was still as beautiful as she was when I first met her. I knew who she was instantly, and I suppose I startled Roberts and the others when I gasped and then cried out. It was unprofessional of me, and Bacon chuckled at my reaction, but I shut him down with a glance and a raised finger. There on the dock was the body of Megan Halsey, the young girl who had intrigued me so many years ago in Leffert’s Corners. There was no doubt in my mind and as I cleared the muck from her eyes I remembered how intelligent and full of life she had been. I also remembered how she had endeared herself to my sister, and how I was going to have to break the news of this girl’s death not only to her family but to Hannah as well. I swallowed my emotions and forced myself into doing things by the book, falling into the routine that helps men in my position get through difficult situations. Even so, as I looked at the still and cold form of the girl I once knew, it was all I could do to keep from breaking down, and I found it necessary to focus on the curious and contradictory state of the body to keep me distracted enough to reign in my emotions.

  I was not the only one to recognize her: Roberts knew her from the files. Her mother was Elizabeth Halsey-Griffith, who had been widowed twice, but had herself vanished from Arkham back in the spring of 1921. To hear Roberts tell it, the only family the girl had left was a spinster aunt by the name of Amanda who had served as Megan’s guardian until she came of age and inherited the combined fortunes of both the Halseys and the Griffiths. She was a member of society, related to families that weren’t quite founding fathers, but were close enough to cause trouble.

  I took the three beat cops to the side and told them to keep their mouths shut, especially to the Advertiser. I had Copper go call for a wagon while Roberts took me home in the patrol car. Bacon gave me some guff for having to stay with the body but I pointed out he had the easiest of jobs; if he would like he could drive me home and then over to French Hill to speak with the aunt, followed by the rest of the day at the Coroner’s Office. After that the complaints stopped, and the three men started following orders.

  Roberts and I proceeded in silence through the streets of Arkham, letting the drone of the engine drown out any stray sounds while I concentrated on what I had seen and tried to figure out what it all meant. It only took a few minutes to reach the eight hundred block of Sentinel Street, but by then the sun had started to rise and the bakery over which my apartment sat was already in full production. Normally landlords would look poorly on my unconventional hours, but the Silvermans were well aware of my position with the State Police, and were accommodating enough to let me come and go as needed, and always had my choice of day-old breads and pastry. In return I put up with early mornings full of old men yelling at each other in Yiddish. It wasn’t the best place to live, but it was mine, and I had grown to love lox and corned beef and schmaltz, though I still missed breakfasts with bacon and sausage.

 
As I fumbled in my coat for my key ring I dismissed Roberts, who gave me a puzzled look. “I don’t expect you to drive me around all day. I just needed to put Bacon in his place. I’m going to go get cleaned up, eat something, and take a quick nap. I’ll be at the morgue by nine. After I talk to the Doctor I’ll head on over to the Griffith House and talk to the aunt.” Roberts still looked at me as if I was doing something wrong. “The girl is dead, telling the aunt now or a few hours from now won’t make much of a difference. Now go home to your wife.” And with that, I trotted up the walk to my home and assumed Roberts went on to his.

  Someday, someone will write a book concerning the mistakes we make when we assume too much.

  As I walked through the door and up the stairs I fell into a machinelike routine. While my body took care of necessary maintenance, my mind was preoccupied with the case; at least that was the delusion, the reality was that I had become preoccupied with the victim. I remembered the precocious teenager whom my sister had brought with her to that Catskills resort and how she had charmed me with her intelligence, wit, and innocence. That she had been threatened by an inhuman thing, which I had rescued her from, probably had something to do with the way I was feeling. There was a fire in my belly. I was irrationally angry that Megan Halsey was dead, and I wanted to make sure somebody paid for what they had done to her. That I had no evidence that she had been murdered was irrelevant. Someone had to be held responsible for extinguishing this beacon of light and innocence, and I was determined to be the one who brought that person to justice. Something rational reared its head and made me briefly question why I was so hell-bent on solving this particular death. I had only met her once, but that cool bit of reason was no match for the emotions that were broiling inside me. To all outward appearances I was merely going through the motions of a normal day, but inside I was seething with a desire for vengeance.