by Pete Rawlik
My boots slammed out a rhythm as they pounded down the sidewalk. I took the ancient wrought iron gate at a run, slamming through it. It let out a loud screech followed by a terrific clang as the metal crashed against the stone pillar that held it in place. As the gate reverberated, the light in the window suddenly stopped moving. The intruder had heard me coming and I assumed he had set his lamp down as he fled, not that it mattered; there was only one way down from the upper level and I was most certainly going to be waiting at the bottom of those stairs.
I burst through the front door and cleared the foyer in bounding but sure steps. I took the corner fast and careened off the far wall before sliding into position at the base of the stairwell. It was only then that I remembered the door that led to the covered porch that sat atop the carriage house. I cursed my poor memory and dashed up the first flight to the landing. The double doors were closed and locked, and I turned to face the second flight of steps that led up into the uninviting darkness of the second-floor hallway. Cautiously, I crept up the stairs, feeling along the wall for the switch that controlled the electric lights. It took a moment or two but I finally found the control and in an instant the lights sprung to life, banishing the menacing darkness and allowing me to see to both ends of the house.
To my left, all the doors were closed, but to the right, several doors were ajar, including the ones that led to the captain’s walk and Megan’s adult bedroom, and from the former room I could see the weak amber light of an oil lamp. I took a careful step forward, but try as I might the old floor creaked under my weight, revealing my position, as if turning on the light hadn’t done that already. Frustrated with my own ineptitude, I dashed down the hall and without a hint of caution threw myself into the captain’s walk, my gun leading the way.
It was perhaps the most idiotic thing I had done in years, and thankfully it didn’t cost me my life. Except for the dying flame of an oil lamp, the room with the great octagonal window was empty. Still fearful, I stuck a hand into Megan’s room and turned on that light as well. Like the hallway and the captain’s walk, the bedroom was empty, and a suspicion slowly crept into my brain. I had used that same oil lamp earlier in the day, and in the captain’s walk where the sole electric light was terribly positioned, and I was certain I had left it right where it now sat. Could I have left it lit? It was possible. I had no recollection either way, nor could I remember looking back at the house as I walked to dinner. What, then, could account for the flickering movement of the light I had observed as I had approached? Just then I heard the gentle breeze rustle through the great elm that occupied the side yard, and as my eyes shifted I saw the branch outside the window shift slightly, and the streetlights beyond vanished momentarily. Even in my drunken state I realized, however belatedly, that the same movement coupled with the flickering light might generate the illusion of a moving light. If the observer was intoxicated, the possibility of misinterpretation would be even greater. I thought back to how many times I had interviewed witnesses who had ultimately turned out to have embellished their accounts, and realized that like them I was suddenly narrating a story in which I saw only what I wanted, and reported inferences and supposition as fact. I had become the entirely unreliable narrator of my own account. Frustrated, I extinguished the oil lamp, wandered down the hall and stairs, turning the lights off as I went. I found my bed, the bed that I had never before slept in, and collapsed into it. Within moments I was asleep, I wish I could say peacefully, but that had not happened for years. But at least I slept, and for me that is often solace enough.
I woke the next morning to the sound of church bells and a hangover. One I could ignore, the other I could not, but I hoped to banish the latter with coffee and sausages and an elixir purchased at the local pharmacy. It amazed me that despite prohibition the number of headache cures available continued to rise. I had always been told of the effectiveness of the Prairie Oyster, but had, while in Britain, discovered Dr. Vesalius’s Restorative and had been completely convinced of its effectiveness. Stumbling around in the kitchen, I noticed that the mousetraps had been sprung, but had failed to catch anything.
After breakfast I lounged about for half an hour and then committed to spending the day going through the papers in Megan’s room, though the first order of business was to make both the office and the captain’s walk habitable. This entailed removing the old books and taking them down to the library, and boxing up family papers that had lain untouched for years, if not decades. Most of this consisted of ledgers and correspondence between the Griffith family and their various business partners. Also here were files concerning the health and welfare of each family member, including birth certificates, medical records, school diplomas, and the like. While it may have been less than ethical on my part I perused each file at length and discovered some puzzling facts. In one file, I discovered a note from his psychoanalyst detailing the extreme breadth and deep entrainment of David Griffith’s aquaphobia. In another I found that the same therapist had diagnosed Amanda Griffith as suffering from female hysteria, including bouts of chronic sapphism. In Elizabeth Halsey’s file I discovered an array of notes concerning numerous minor injuries including bruises, bites, and cuts, all of which had occurred in the time shortly after her first husband’s death. Attached to these was a letter from the director of Sefton Asylum asking that she cease her charitable visits to the hospital. There was a vague threat that if she returned, the director would have no choice but to notify the authorities of her indiscretions. There was even a file for Megan, and in it a birth certificate, albeit in poor condition with the date of birth obscured but her name clearly spelled out, as was that of the man who had delivered her, Doctor William Houghton of Aylesbury.
After a few hours of this I had accumulated a rather large pile of trash consisting of unintelligible receipts, boxes, and water-damaged papers which as best as I could determine had no value to my investigation or to anyone else. Wanting to dispose of this refuse, I wandered down to the cellar where a barrel was kept for storage of combustible items. It was the simplest of tasks and should not have created controversy in any manner. Yet as soon as I took the lid off the barrel I discovered the most startling of things. There in the bottom were the bodies of three mice, still fresh, their bodies pinched in that queer manner that comes from being caught in a trap. I quickly raced about the house and discovered that three of the traps I had set had been sprung, but there were no bodies pinned beneath the arm. Confounded, I reset the traps, all the time wondering how and who had disposed of the bodies, for it certainly had not been me.
This was but the first of many events that I could not rationally explain. Of course, I tried to rationalize it. Perhaps Saltonstall had hired a cleaning woman for me, and it had been she who had disposed of the rodents. Perhaps this even explained the oil lamp left burning in the upstairs window. Yet would not such a person leave a note? And if a cleaner had been hired there was no evidence of her work anywhere else in the house. Alternatively, I suspected that perhaps there was an intruder in the place, one who either had a key, or came and went by means of an entrance I did not know about. Yet once again the question rose as to why the traps were emptied and nothing else seemed out of place. It was a conundrum, and I will admit that a sneaking thought concerning my own memory wormed its way into my brain. In the end I laughed it off as a failing of my own memory. Surely I must have been awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of the traps being sprung, and then in a half-awake stupor emptied them, fully intent on resetting them in the morning. Only my semiconscious mind had forgotten the event entirely, and therefore I had not attended to the traps as intended. In a matter of hours I had brushed the whole affair aside, satisfied with what was the most logical of possibilities. Except, deep down in the pit of some dark corner of my mind, something small and insubstantial churned about and whispered doubt into my ear.
The rest of the afternoon was uneventful. I finished cleaning the two rooms, and then began the process of e
xamining the contents of Megan Halsey’s room. I gave a perfunctory examination of her wardrobe and the objets d’art that were scattered about the room, but found nothing of real interest amongst these. However, after using a knife to force the lock on her rolltop desk I found myself with an immense number of documents, mostly related to the business of running the family estate, but many of a personal nature as well.
The first thing that caught my eye was a small report written by my brother, the psychologist Wingate Peaslee, being an evaluation of Megan Halsey when she was a child. More specifically, it was a summary of results from various tests he had administered to the girl to evaluate her intelligence and behavior. The details were beyond me, but words such as precocious, savant, genius, and inherited eminence were all frequently used, as were the terms psychosis and empathie. It was apparently this evaluation along with my brother’s recommendation that initiated Megan’s enrollment at The Hall School. That Megan was intelligent came as no surprise to me, but I had not realized that she was considered a genius. That such a life had been snuffed out filled me with a sense of profound loss, and for just a moment I mourned the loss of what might have been.
As interesting as the report was, the most visually attractive was a rather ornate volume with silver tooling and a matching clasp lock. The key was nowhere to be found, but the book popped open easily under application of a knife, and revealed itself to be the diary of Megan Halsey. The pages were full of cramped but neat handwritten notes dating back to the start of her attendance at The Hall School all the way up until earlier this year. This book became one of the first items that I placed into the crate for detailed reading, and marked the beginning of what I soon began to think of as the documents in the case of Megan Halsey.
Rummaging around in the desk, I found several other documents that were of interest, including letters addressed to Megan from her mother and aunt, but also copies of the wills for both ladies as well as one belonging to David Griffith. Also included was a rather large document in an envelope bearing the seal of the Bank of England. Finally, there were several deeds to various properties scattered throughout Arkham and a few elsewhere in the Commonwealth. All of these found their way into my crate for further review.
As the number of documents increased I began formulating a strategy to review them. However, despite the fact that I was formulating an efficient and well-thought-out process for evaluating what I had found, my mind kept wandering back to the diary that Megan had kept. For some strange reason I was drawn to that small volume of private thoughts and though I knew it to be highly unlikely to provide any clues, I decided that this would be the first document I would read. I took my crate of documents into the office and left it there, carrying the diary downstairs, where I could enjoy an afternoon snack and a cup of coffee.
I have called Megan’s diary a small book, but the truth is it covered eight years of regular entries, each of quite some length. Surprisingly, the young lady had a most interesting view on life, and had developed a style of writing that seemed to draw me into the rich and lush world that she described. I will not summarize the contents of the diary, that is entirely unnecessary, but I must say that as I read page after page and the minutes became hours and the hours drifted into the evening, I felt in Megan a kind of kinship. This young girl, so wondrously intelligent, had become isolated from her family and instead found comfort in the few equals she could find at The Hall School, namely my sister, Hannah, and a woman called Asenath Waite. It made me happy to know that Hannah had not only been Megan’s mentor, but her friend as well, though all three occasionally received a tongue-lashing from the headmistress.
I had become so enthralled by Miss Halsey’s writing that I read deep into the evening and only paused when my stomach protested. I had little in the way of groceries, so made do with a rather thick piece of provolone and a sliced pickle smothered with mustard on rye bread. It was not much of a supper but it quelled my hunger and allowed me to quickly return to the task at hand. When the clock chimed nine times I realized that the shadows about the house had grown deep and even though I had taken leave and was not expected at the office, it was time for me to retire. I read a few more pages of the diary by candlelight, but then put the book down on the nightstand and slept. As always, my night was fitful and more than once I woke covered in sweat, my pillow damp and my hair moist. As usual, I flipped the pillow and shifted away from the now-wet blankets and sheets. There was in this an odd kind of comfort. A routine, no matter how unsettling eventually becomes not only accepted but longed for as a representation of the status quo, of normalcy, no matter how strange that may be.
It was late Monday morning when I realized that something strange had happened during the night. I had wandered upstairs to take another look at Megan’s bedroom. This time I was more thorough, flipping the mattress, opening picture frames, and flipping through books before once again returning to the rolltop desk. There, amidst the papers that I had yet to go through, I found another copy of my brother’s report on Megan Halsey. I thought it odd that she would have two copies of the document, but then I looked again and found duplicate copies of the wills as well. Perplexed, I took the documents back to the office with the full intent of comparing both sets and making sure they were identical. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the copies I had deposited in the box of documents in the case of Megan Halsey were gone, vanished, no longer in the place where I left them the night before. Somehow, in the night, things, small things, had changed, and I was no longer comfortable believing that I had done it and merely forgotten.
I know there are men who would have left at this point; I’m sure most men would have, but I was not most men. I had seen things, survived things that would have driven others mad, but I was still here, still lucid, and stronger for it, though alienists, particularly my brother, might argue that point. It was true something strange was happening in Griffith House, but I had faced worse, and I wasn’t about to scurry away from the task I had set myself. Now that I had read her diary, I was more determined than ever to discover who had killed Megan Halsey and why, and whatever was happening wasn’t going to stand in my way; if anything it only served to steel my resolve.
That afternoon I strolled down the hill to pick up a few things I needed and stopped into a diner for soup and a ham sandwich. On my way back up the hill, I decided to explore my new neighborhood and skipped the turn off Garrison and onto High, and instead tracked down the slope to Saltonstall Street, named for the old family who still served as attorneys for most of the town. I passed the Georgian mansion of the Wilmarth family and a prestigious mansion now operated as a boarding house. Farther on I tramped past the DAR and could just make out the roof of the Miskatonic Club behind it. Crossing West Street I passed a small, well-manicured home which bordered a rather large vacant lot full of overgrown plants and huge trees. Through the great boughs I could see the back of Griffith House and realized that the small gate in the stone wall led to the path that wound through the garden to the back of my new home.
I had not realized the back garden backed up all the way to the other side of the block. I had not entered that part of the property since the day I had shot Amanda Griffith, and had not been part of the team that had scoured the garden for evidence. Still, I knew where the path that lay before me came out, and knew that it led to the cellar door. I don’t know why I decided to cut through the garden to Griffith House, but I did. I don’t suppose I needed a reason, for it was an entirely reasonable thing to do.
The gate creaked with the annoying metal-on-metal sound that people hate. There was some resistance from the weeds and vines that had grown up and through the frame, but they posed no real problem as the portal swung open and I kicked through the detritus and growth that come from years of neglect. On the sides of the house elms may have dominated the landscape, but here in the back a single, massive red oak stood and spread its branches out to cast shade over the garden. Beneath its boughs shrubs and vines h
ad gone wild and intruded onto the path with various degrees of success. The feral vegetation had climbed up the tree and infested the branches, and between this and the leaves of the oak my sight of the house was effectively blocked as soon as I took a single step off the street.
The path was comprised of crushed oyster shells, common in these parts and cheap to put in and maintain. Some of the better homes use pavers or granite shards, but I have always loved the feel of shell beneath my boots and the sound it makes as it shifts and crushes against others of its kind. You don’t get that sound with stones, they’re too regular, too apt to settle into place. Oyster shells aren’t like that, they rasp against each other, shattering, crushing, crunching, and scraping against each other. It creates a sense of impermanence, of change, of constant motion, not unlike the sea and the beach from whence they originally harvested. I suppose they reminded me of the sea, and the sea has always made me happy.
Farther in, maybe ten steps or so, the oysters became mixed with broken acorns and their caps. The mixture shifted the color and texture of the ground and the comforting crunch of my footsteps became muffled and dull. The path itself was not as straight as I had thought it would be; it curved around the oak, just beyond where the great roots left the surface and disappeared into the ground. It curved around like a hairpin, though once on the far side I could not see through the brambles to where the bend in the trail began. Beneath the tree the spring air was still and quiet. There were no birds flying or singing, no insects either, though given the coolness of the season this was not entirely surprising. There should have been squirrels, though, but maybe they had learned to avoid the area after Miss Griffith had begun her predations.
There was a fork in the path, surprising given the size of the garden, but there it was. I glanced down one direction and then the other. Neither was a straight path to the house, and I could only see a few yards down either before they turned out of sight. I chose one at random, followed it around the curve and past some yews and then some holly. Beyond the holly there was a low stone wall and an open gate. Without thinking, I walked through and found myself not in the yard behind the house, but instead on the sidewalk at Saltonstall, right where I began. Except there hadn’t been any holly when I had walked in. I turned back. The holly was gone, as was the path of oyster shell and acorns that had brought me back. Only the oyster shell path remained.