by Pete Rawlik
It took me hours to get that thing up the stairs and into my car. Then, as instructed, I planted the charges and left. As we drove back toward Arkham, the summer night air whipping through our hair, I thought I saw a smile creep across that face. It was a sad smile and it was joined by tears, but whether they were tears of joy or regret I couldn’t say, and there was no point in asking. As the charges went off, and Corvin Farm was swallowed by earth and flames, we drove on.
By the time we reached Arkham it was nearly midnight, but I knew that Nichols would still be at the station, waiting for me. I didn’t go there. I took my passenger down to the docks, and I helped him stumble and wheeze his way down to the end of a pier that jutted out into the winding Miskatonic River. He held my shoulder as we reached the end of that crumbling wooden platform, and in that grip was all I needed to know.
He stood there by himself, unsteady in the night air as I backed away. He was still a monster, but standing there, committed to what had to be done, he was perhaps the most human of men I had ever seen. He never turned around, never looked back, not even when I began chanting and the wind came up and the clouds rolled in. Great rolls of thunder shattered the night, and heat lightning lit up the heavens as I screamed out those strange words that had decorated the banner in the crypt:
OGTHROD AI’F
GEB’L—EE’H
YOG-SOTHOTH
‘NGAH’NH
AI’Y ZHRO
And with that, the thing from the crypt, the composite thing of the incomplete body of the creature they called Pulver and of the orderly who had agreed to serve him, Llewelyn Barrass, turned to dust. It was a pale blue powder, luminescent in a way, and it hung there in the air, in the shape of a man. A broken man to be sure, a man who had made a bargain and been horribly betrayed, but a man nonetheless. It hung there still as death, and then the wind came and blew it all into the Miskatonic River. It seemed to cling together for a time, but then the currents and the roiling eddies broke it apart, swallowed it up, and carried it out to sea.
IV. An Aftermath and Unanswered Questions
At the station I put out the description of Doctor Asche, or whatever his name was. I knew that it was probably too late, but I had to try. Nichols drove me home and once I was at my door gave me a bottle to crawl into and some days out to sleep it off. But try as I might, I find I cannot sleep, not when there are men like Asche out there, men capable of and willing to do horrible things. They need to be stopped, but I cannot do it alone. This is not a job for normal policemen. Where do I find the men who have the fortitude and the will to oppose them?
It has been two days since I did what had to be done, and this morning I finally have word that a man fitting the description I had given of Doctor Asche had been seen in Providence buying tickets for the train to New York, but that was more than a week ago and none could say where he was bound after that. Nor could they recall the name he had used, though one porter said that the man bore an uncanny resemblance to members of the Ward family. This man Asche, Doctor Asche, was not what he seemed, and I have many questions for Dr. Willett. This time he will supply me with the answers I seek, for I have something to show him—something I think he is quite familiar with.
There is a piece of paper in my pocket with the words on it in a language I do not recognize. Two quatrains, two incantations, one of which I spoke to put an end to Barrass’s suffering. Next to it are the words that Wilbur Dunlock heard that serve to bring the dead back to some semblance of life. I will show them to Willett and demand that he explain what has happened, and how it can be done again. These resurrected dead might be put to good use against the things that haunt Arkham.
I read back over what I have written here, and have to wonder if I am really that desperate? Dare I resort to necromancy to put an end to the madness that seems to infect Arkham? Is this what I have been led to?
I have taken that slip and hidden it away in my desk. It seems I am not as desperate as all that—perhaps someday, but not today. I will not create monsters to battle monsters.
At least, not today.
CHAPTER 25
“An Inquest into the Death of Wilbur Whateley”
From the Journals of Robert Peaslee September 7 1928
After the first hour I began to wonder what I was doing in the courtroom. The inquest into the death was a complete farce. They had no body. Armitage, Rice, and Morgan claimed that they had seen the man lying in the library where the dog had attacked and torn his throat out. I say that Wilbur Whateley was a man, but from what the three university professors had seen, such a classification would have been unlikely. Based on their sworn testimony Wilbur was a hybrid monstrosity, a chimera, with skin like that of a crocodile, or in some places like that of a snake or lizard. Below the waist, the saurian legs were covered with thick fur and ended in odd, unearthly pads that were neither claws nor hooves. Tentacles with sucking mouths protruded from the thing’s waist, and as they were described I thought of the wounds sustained by Anne Newman when she was raped. There were also apparently vestigial eyes embedded in the hips and behind these was a kind of tubular appendage that could have been a kind of mouth or throat. All of this was unsubstantiated by the time the medical examiner had arrived—the thing that had pretended to be a man had shrunken away, sublimated into the very ether. All that remained was a white, viscous material that tests showed bore a vague resemblance to the cartilaginous material found in sharks.
There was some discussion of the dog being dangerous; after all, Armitage and the others had admitted that the beast had attacked and killed a man. This was countered with two arguments: one concerned the gun that had been found near to the body, which had obviously been brought in by Whateley to do harm, and therefore it could be construed that the animal was defending itself; alternatively, Armitage argued, there was no evidence that a man had actually been killed, despite his own testimony to the contrary. It was rather circular logic, but I learned quite some time ago that such reasoning was perfectly acceptable in the American judiciary system.
The whole process seemed to be coming to a close when I was suddenly called to testify. To what end, I didn’t understand, for I hadn’t actually seen anything of value. I only entered the library with the medical examiner, and by then there was only a noxious odor and that white, gelatinous paste on the floor. I prepared myself to keep my answers short and to the point, and explain that I could neither confirm nor deny what the university professors had said.
The first question was unexpected.
“Detective Peaslee, did you know Wilbur Whateley?”
“No. We never met.”
“Did you know the victim lived in Dunwich?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve been spending an awful lot of time in Dunwich lately, haven’t you, Detective?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I have notes here from several reliable individuals that you’ve been seen in Dunwich on a regular basis, almost every weekend, since the beginning of June. Is this true?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And these visits had nothing to do with Mr. Whateley? You never visited his farm, or saw him in the village?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re telling this court that in three months of regular visits to Dunwich, you never met the nine-foot-tall freak that was the subject of half the gossip in the village?”
“I didn’t frequent the village, sir.”
“Well, what exactly were you doing in Dunwich—picking flowers?”
“No, sir. It’s a private matter, sir. Family business.”
That didn’t sit well with Judge Hand. Within the hour I was in the chief’s office, learning just how unhappy both he and the judge were with me. I hadn’t actually done anything wrong, but my attitude put me in a bad spot, and the visits to Dunwich, which I wouldn’t talk about, suggested I was hiding something, something they assumed had to do with Wilbur Whateley. In a way it did—he was the impetus for my preparations�
�but I didn’t have anything to do with his death. It raises an interesting conundrum. Is a man who is preparing to attack another man culpable if he dies by another’s hands? It would have to be left for better minds than mine to determine. I certainly wasn’t going to volunteer what I had been doing in that long-forgotten graveyard or in the old Halsey cabin, or why my car smelled of moldy earth, or what that queer gray dust that seemed to linger on my clothes was. None of it mattered anymore, anyway. Wilbur Whateley was dead and whatever he had been doing in that old farmhouse was over.
Of this I was certain, for amongst the papers filed with the court were inspections of the Whateley farm and house which affirmed that the ancient and crumbling edifice was empty, and that no one else was in residence on the property. I smiled when I read that the investigators had found little of value on the property and had immediately condemned all the structures that occupied the lands. It was surprising that they suggested that the house and other edifices be burned, but as I read I learned that an unwonted stench seemed to pervade the entire property and that the inspectors had suspected that waste, both animal and human, had been improperly disposed of, making the buildings uninhabitable. That they had not seen or heard anything in the old house brought comfort to me. I concluded that the horrible and invisible monster that had been Whateley’s companion that rainy evening in June was no longer there, and I assumed that it had been returned to whatever hellish place it had been called up from. As far as I was concerned, the issue with Wilbur Whateley was closed, and I could go back to looking into the death of Megan Halsey. Unfortunately, the Chief saw things differently.
By September 3rd I was transferred. I wasn’t Arkham’s problem anymore. All the tasks I had undertaken for them, all the stygian darkness I had fought against, all the little horrors I had dealt with on their behalf, all these were forgotten. I was damaged goods, a blemish as far as the department was concerned, and it was clear to me that if I went quietly there wouldn’t be much of an investigation into certain cases that had remained unsolved.
“You seem to like visiting Dunwich, Peaslee,” ranted the Chief as he handed me my orders. “Let us see how you like living out there. Effective immediately, you’re transferred to the State Police barracks in Aylesbury.”
PART FIVE
Megan Halsey-Griffith
May–September 1928
CHAPTER 26
“A Note on a Diary Found in an Abandoned Car”
The Statement of Cedric Hart, Commander Massachusetts State Police, Aylesbury Barracks September 20 1928
On September 14, 1928, after receiving reports of strange events in Dunwich, five officers of the State Police were dispatched from the barracks in Aylesbury to investigate. Official logs record that they departed the motor pool at 09:45 and reported by radio arriving at a local farm at 11:23. According to locals interviewed later, they left their car at the farm and proceeded by foot crosscountry to an area known as Cold Spring Glen, where the disturbances seemed to be focused. They were never seen or heard from again, and it is assumed they were victims of the conflagration of events that culminated on the evening of September 15—what the tabloids have labeled the Dunwich Horror.
It was, however, on the evening of September 14, with the quintet of officers still missing, that I mobilized the remaining forces and ordered them to Dunwich, including Officer Robert Peaslee, just recently transferred from Arkham. Peaslee left the barracks at 19:17. At 20:36 he used his radio to report the discovery of a car concealed in the thick vegetation along the Eckert Road. His communication with the radio officer indicated that he was stopping to investigate. After twenty minutes the radio officer tried to raise Peaslee, and when he did not respond, a second officer was rerouted to Peaslee’s reported location.
Officer Hamilton Phillips reported at 21:52 that he had found Peaslee’s vehicle and the abandoned car, but Peaslee was not there. On the driver’s seat of the abandoned vehicle was a small diary, selected contents of which follow. Beneath the book was a slip of paper from Peaslee’s logbook. It had been torn out hastily and two words, and only two words, had been written. There can be no doubt that it was Peaslee who wrote those words, for they were clearly in his odd and distinctive script, though to Phillips and the rest of the men in the Aylesbury Barracks they meant nothing. Two words that perhaps might shed light on what happened amidst the hills of Dunwich. Perhaps his former colleagues in Arkham, or his sister, they might understand what Peaslee meant when he inscribed into that slip of paper the two words that his hand seemed hesitant to write:
She Lives!
CHAPTER 27
“The Rebirth of Megan Halsey”
From the Diary of Megan Halsey May 1 1928
I remember being murdered.
I remember the faces, those terrible faces staring down at me with dead, uncaring eyes as I was pushed off the bridge and into the river. I hit the surface hard, the cold water enveloped me, surrounded me like a blanket of ice. I held my breath as the current pulled me down and slowly put more and more distance between the air and my lungs. It only took a moment for the ache to start, that longing in the jaw, the throat, and the mouth that demands, screams, begs to be fulfilled. I held off as long as I could, swallowing, screaming, and struggling to survive, to live, to have just one more moment. When my resolve finally failed, and my mouth opened and the thick, frigid waters filled my mouth and then my lungs, I opened my eyes and took in the world one last time. I caught a glimpse of the bridge then, with the moon and stars behind it. There was movement, it might have just been a trick of the eye, a wave or ripple passing across the surface of the river, or it might have been a man holding his head over the side of the bridge, making sure that I went under and stayed that way. I closed my eyes and there was nothing but the waters of the river, dark and cold and wet, and I let it sweep me away body and mind.
I remember the darkness, and the whispers in the darkness. That’s all they were at first, just whispers, nothing more, faint, like a moth’s wings beating against the glass. But with each moment they grew louder, more distinct, the fluttering wings resolved, separated, and became distinct. And then they were gone, replaced with a droning, as if the moth had been replaced by an angry wasp that I, trapped in the darkness, could never see. I was still cold, and the world was still black, but I could hear something and that meant that I had a chance, a chance to live, if I was willing to fight for it.
The angry wasp faded away, and the voices returned. There was a long period of silence and then a new voice spoke and the old voices seemed to mumble and become background noise. Sometime later yet another voice came; this one was softer, kinder, it was somehow familiar. I felt someone touch me; a hand wiped my face clean. I could hear him breathing, feel the heat of his breath as it gently caressed my skin. I tried to cry out, to move, to get his attention somehow, but nothing would work. My hands, arms, and legs seemed paralyzed, still frozen perhaps by the cold, dark waters that I had been immersed in. Not even my eyes would work. In my mind I was screaming, but I could hear nothing but the low voices of other people mumbling incoherently. Then, there was silence.
It wasn’t the same as before, it wasn’t the absolute silence of the darkness in which I had dwelled for so long that I had lost track of time. It was the silence of the river, a living river with water lapping at the sides of boats, birds calling in the distance, and the occasional fish breaking the surface. There was something calming about those sounds, meditative almost. It centered me somehow, allowed me to focus on the task at hand, and that was coming back to life.
I focused on the simplest of tasks. I needed to gain control of my body, to exert some sort of command over a function, any function, even a single muscle. I focused on opening my eyes. There was nothing at first, but inevitably my left eyelid twitched. It wasn’t much, but it was a beginning, and in moments both eyes snapped open and for the first time in what I presumed was days I could see. It was still dark out, but there were enough lights to let me see the
man who was standing not far away with his back to me. I tried to call out to him, to somehow get his attention, but to no avail. All of my attempts fell on deaf ears.
No sound came out of my mouth, but it, as well as my eyes, were working, and a moment later I could feel my arms and fingers begin to respond to my commands, but only in the crudest of ways. My arms were trembling and then thrashing about. The spasms spread to my chest and then down to my legs and feet. It was as if a kind of electric shock had been applied to my body. The pain, contracting muscles and what felt like breaking bones, was tremendous. This seizure caught the man’s attention and he backed away, muttering the Lord’s Prayer, which got louder with each backward step.
As quickly as the pain had come, it subsided, but it left in its wake control over my limbs and with almost no effort I leaped to my feet. I was still unsteady, and my voice was not fully controlled yet. As a consequence I reached out for support, and at the same time opened my mouth and let out the most sorrowful of gurgling moans. The man panicked and out of nowhere there was suddenly a gun in his hand, and it was pointing in my direction. His hand was shaking as I stumbled forward. I saw his hand tighten on the grip and his eye suddenly focus and dilate. Time seemed to slow down, at least for him. I moved like the wind, knocking the gun from his hand and instinctually wrapping my arm around his neck as I twisted around him. There was a sickening snap and he went limp. I dropped him there, almost in the exact same position as I had been in, and then ran.
I ran off the docks and into the streets of Arkham. I ran through the darkness like a madwoman covered in filth, heading for the only place I thought was safe, the place I called home. I sneaked in through the back, shedding the nets and ropes that still clung to my body. They were shreds now, and useless to anyone.
I climbed the stairs in silence and I bathed in the half-light of a single candle. Only when I felt I had removed the grime and filth that had penetrated every bit of me did I dare turn on the lights. I cleaned the bathroom, making sure that there was no trace of the river muck left in the tub. By this time my aunt was up and as I came down the stairs she greeted me in her own peculiar way. She clasped a book to her chest and mentioned something about doing some gardening. The backyard was still a mess, a victim of years of neglect that I hadn’t yet had a chance to tend to.