Please tell Father that I was summoned to Professor Rice’s office late last week to discuss a matter that greatly troubles me. The professor, head of the Classical Languages department, was incensed and wanted to know why Father had hired a noted Boston thaumaturgist to exhume and reanimate the body of his son, Carlisle Rice. I had no idea what Professor Rice was talking about until I remembered that mother had said our family broker’s name was Rice and put the pieces of the puzzle together.
I pleaded ignorance about the situation, which was easy to do, since I knew next to nothing. Professor Rice was not mollified and threatened to thrash me with his walking stick, seeing me as an acceptable substitute for you, dear Father. We circled his desk several times until I was able to distract him by pulling copies of ancient Greek grimoires off his shelves and bolted out his office door.
I understand the necessity of engaging the thaumaturgist, if it was the only way to find out the status of our investments quickly, but would have appreciated a warning first, before the man was hired. Had I known, I could have declined Professor Rice’s request to meet, or at least brought my own cane along for protection. You should both be pleased I escaped unscathed with my family jewels intact. Professor Rice nearly caught me in a very sensitive portion of my anatomy with a full-power swing. He may be stocky and his hair may have turned iron-gray, but he’s fast. Meg told me her father said Professor Rice used to be captain of the fencing team when he was an undergraduate, which explains his speed. I’m lucky I got out in one piece.
I hope the thaumaturgist was able to obtain the details you needed, Father, and look forward to an update on our family’s financial situation at your earliest convenience. Perhaps we can discuss this matter at Thanksgiving so I can revise my fiscal behavior appropriately?
Speaking of Thanksgiving, Mother, I will be bringing Miss Trevor along with me when we take the train to St. Augustine for the holiday. Recent events have sped up my plans vis-à-vis my darling Meg. Suffice it to say that you will be getting your wish sooner than you expected, dear Mother.
My plans changed due to a fortunate accident. Meg and I had been studying side by side in the common room of the suite I share with seven other students. We were alone, drinking coffee to stay awake and preparing for exams the next morning—mine in geology, hers in epigraphy. One of my index cards fell on the floor, so I bent to pick it up and bumped the side of the table, spilling coffee on the back of my shirt and the front of Meg’s blouse. Ever the practical one, Meg immediately took off her blouse, bid me remove my shirt, and retreated with me to my bedroom. Shirt and blouse in hand, she soaked both in soapy water in my bedroom’s shared lavatory sink.
While the garments sat submerged, Meg and I had a few minutes to talk. I apologized for my clumsiness, but Meg told me it was an accident and could have happened to anyone. With luck, the stains would come out when the shirt and blouse were properly laundered. As she spoke, my eyes were almost hypnotically drawn to a familiar pewter amulet around her neck. It was identical to the one around my own. Both bore the image of the Great Old One, Cthulhu.
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” said Meg, giving me a half bow. I repeated the chant and bowed to her in return, High Priest to her High Priestess. I closed the door to my bedroom and together we worshiped our god.
Later, Meg shared that the Great Old One told her in a dream that she had quickened and would have a son. This child, and all our future sons and daughters, will be your grandchildren, dear mother. Meg and I are counting on you and Father to spoil them, and train them in the ways of our people.
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!
Your loving son – Arthur
P.S.The results of the Carlisle Rice exhumation no longer matter, Father. Even if we lost everything in the crash, Meg says the Great Old One will grant us riches beyond counting in return for dedicating our first born to his service. Cthulhu fhtagn!
Bridges of Arkham County
Guy Riessen
Winter is a time of conflicting emotions for me. I sit by one of the tall wrought iron framed windows that stud the walls of the Miskatonic University cafeteria. The second floor view looks out over the open central courtyard forming the anchor point for the ancient red brick buildings of academia standing as beacons leading the discovery and explorations of the unknown.
I stir the bowl of red bean soup, letting it cool some while I stare out the window at the thick wet flakes of snow tumbling white noise from the gray skies. My black umbrella sits across the seat of the chair next to me, an affectation of mine. I can't stand being wet from rain, or from snow melting into the shoulders of my tweed jacket.
It's the middle of the Winter Solstice break for the students. Many of the faculty members also took the opportunity to go home to their friends and families. All that's left on campus are the few die-hard researchers who have no one worth more than precious research time, and the lonely who simply have no one. I am, I think, perhaps a bit of both.
The musical tones of a woman's giggle make my heart race. But as I glance up, eying the reflection in the window glass, I can see it's Dr. Alexandra Sutton. She's faculty of the Egyptology department and fresh back from a dig near the Valley of the Kings. The largest untouched find since Carter unearthed Tutankhamun in 1922. She had brought back some brilliant relics and no doubt couldn't spare the time away from campus, regardless of the desires of her family. Dr. Sutton and the couple of friends she is with sit down at a table near the center of the large room.
I sigh. So cliché, right? To sigh, I mean. Particularly egregious while staring longingly out a window, to be sure. Oh well. I'm longing alright, and I sigh a lot these days. What else is a lovelorn professor to do at this time of year while I stir my cooling lunch and strum my melancholy heart strings by sitting at this window?
– 11 Years Earlier –
I stood there frozen, like one of Dr. Woltman's prehistoric insect-creatures held in stasis within a blob of amber in the Paleontology Lab. I'd never seen the woman who sat at the table in front of me at Miskatonic University before.
I'd have known if I had. She was stunning. Red hair cut in a tight bob that was all the rage these days. A splash of freckles crossed her nose and cheeks. Her eyes danced in the light of the low-hanging chandeliers draping the cafeteria in a lace of highlights and shadows.
I was quite dumbfounded until Ralph Deglasse bumped into me as he tried to move between the tables heading to the exit. Luckily, this stunning beauty was head-down in a stack of papers at her elbow. She pushed her hair back and tucked it behind her ear as she concentrated on the papers before her.
"Oh, pardon me!" Deglasse rumbled, bumping my shoulder as he pushed past.
"Ow! Hot!" I said as my soup slopped over the side of the bowl.
"Are you okay?" the woman asked, looking up at me at last. Her eyes crinkled at the edges, wavering between amusement and concern.
"Oh, hmmm? Yes. Just startled, and now a bit embarrassed." I smiled an apology.
She returned my smile and my heart skipped a beat.
"So, uh, nice weather?" I stammered. Brilliant and timely. For my next trick, I’ll stumble around with my shoes untied.
She glanced out the window at the thick white flakes which drifted down to gather in a white curving arc its base. She coughed lightly behind her hand and giggled. "Yes, I suppose it's nice. If you're sitting inside."
Her laugh was charming. Or perhaps I was simply charmed.
She nodded to the seat at her table by the window. "Please, sit, before your soup ices over."
I sat.
"So," I said, "I don't think I've seen you here in the cafeteria before, Doctor...." I'm never quite sure how to address women I don't know. Mrs? Miss? Most of us have our doctorates though, so I was playing the odds.
"Dr. Landis. And you are?"
"Dr. Fields, at your service." I motioned lifting the brim of an imaginary bowler.
Her smile was dazzling in the afterglow of her
laugh. "My friends call me Sarah, Dr. Fields."
"Horatio. I mean, that's my first name anyway, but most people call me Tom. That's my middle name. I mean Thomas is my middle name."
Her smile widened and her finger drifted along her cheek. I shifted in my seat as I stumbled along this unfamiliar territory. Dr. Horatio Fields, flirting. What next? No, really, what next? I was completely out of my very limited element.
Sarah spoke into the growing pause before I became too flustered. "I'm sure you haven't seen me here before. In fact, this is the first time I've been to the cafeteria on campus. I was invited to M.U. in August, but after orientation most of my time was spent either off-campus, in the library, or in my office. I'm pulling together curriculum for an Intro to Astronomy class next semester but Miskatonic brought me in primarily as an astrophysics researcher in the new Extraterrestrial Studies Department."
"Ah, astrophysics. Figuring when the stars are right for extraterrestrial invasion?"
She laughed again. I was enamored by that sound.
"Stars are right, indeed. Miskatonic is setting up an expedition to investigate a probable UFO crash site across from Tierra del Fuego on the Antarctic shelf. Once the site was identified, there have been several aeroplane flyover-photographs taken at the university's behest.”
She pulled some photographs from the bottom of the stack of papers. With the tip of a pencil she pulled from behind her ear, she leaned across the table and pointed to some areas on the black and white images. I'd never seen aerial photography before, though I had heard it was used in the Great War.
"This one is from June of this year," she said, pointing to a photograph that looked like nothing more than snow. She slid another photograph next to the first. "And this one is from last month. You can see much more of the permafrost now. Most of the seasonal snow is gone." She drew the tip of the pencil in a line that followed an indistinct trail on the darker permafrost regions. I looked outside at the heavy snowfall, but she saved me from saying something stupid. "It's summer of course, south of the equator."
"Oh yes, summer. Of course it is," I nodded. "And what might be the cause of these lines, here?" I traced several parallel darker lines in the permafrost.
"Unknown for certain, but I believe that is the direction of impact. Those lines are where the craft hit the permafrost and slid, burying itself at a forty-eight-degree angle approximately here," she said, moving her pencil into the still white areas of the photo.
"Forty-eight degrees, eh?" I said, attempting to keep the conversation going even though I had no idea what exactly that meant, not being an expert in things from outer space crashing into stuff. I used up the entirety of my Extraterrestrial Studies knowledge with my "stars are right" comment.
"Just a theory, of course." She smiled again, looking up from the photo and into my eyes.
"Of course," I said. Her intense gaze was almost making me uncomfortable when she inclined her head toward my bowl.
"Best have some before it gets cold enough for ice fishing."
"Silly me." I sipped some of the tepid soup.
"So what do you do here at Miskatonic besides teach? What's your research field?" she asked.
"Ah. Dead languages, ancient texts, you know. Teasing meaning from the diatribes of madmen seems to be how I spend most of my time." I chuckled. Her eyes were so green, but with flecks of bronze. I think I must have been staring and realized I missed something she said. "Come again?" I said.
"Oh, I was just saying that was marvelous! I, too, have a fondness and gift for unknown languages. Then I asked whether you went on expeditions or whether people brought you things to decipher."
"A little of both. Expeditions are quite the romp, I must say. My last was to Bali, of all places. Of course we didn't have anything so fancy as flyover photos. Planes were something of a rarity at that point. In fact, we sailed for four months just to get there. More time on the ship than on the island itself!"
She laughed then. I think that was the moment she touched my hand as she reached for the photographs. Everything seemed to stop as her soft fingers drifted across my knuckles. I wondered if it was too late to switch the focus of my research to, oh – and I’m just tossing this out there – let’s say, astrophysics? Regardless of what Dr. Goddard was saying in Germany, it's not like it was rocket science or something, right?
***
The next week passed in a whirlwind of dizzying emotions and rising snow drifts. It was the heaviest snowfall ever recorded for December in Arkham. My thoughts hadn't turned toward the papers I was supposed to read over the break since the lunch when I first met Sarah. I was smitten, an emotion I was unfamiliar with. I'd never noticed before, but the tall windows of my professorial housing apartment let in such wonderful afternoon light. Even though it was my residence, I spent far more time hunched over manuscripts and tablets in my office or the antiquities lab than I ever did in my apartment.
The shifting light told me it was still snowing outside. Lazy beams drifted through the curtains, catching the dust motes in twinkling columns before falling onto the dream lying next to me. I pushed a short strand of red hair back behind her ear and her flushed cheeks dimpled into a smile.
"I'm hungry," Sarah growled, voice husky.
"I don't think I'm quite up, so to speak, for another roll yet. I'm not twenty anymore, you know."
Her hand flashed from beneath the covers and shoved me back. "Down, you brute! I mean I'm hungry for food. It's afternoon already and we haven't even had breakfast." Her laugh turned into a coughing fit and she took a drink from the glass of water I kept on the side table. “Oh, pardon me. Too much exertion and not enough food, Professor!”
"Well, considering we haven't left the apartment in a week, I’m going to guess we'll have tough luck food-wise.” I rolled from beneath the covers, grabbing my robe from where it hung on the bedpost. I stood and slid my feet into my buckskin slippers.
I shuffled out into the kitchen. I heard her step into her shoes. She hadn't even been back to her own place since the afternoon we met.
I peered into the empty ice box. Opening the tight smaller door above, I found even the ice had vanished. Dishes were stacked in the sink and coffee mugs littered the small wooden counter.
"Hmmm," I said, looking out at the still-heavy snowfall. "We could go down to the cafeteria," I called back toward the bedroom.
"Hmmm," she said from much closer than I expected. I looked over. She was standing with one hand resting on a jutted hip. A very naked jutted hip. The skin around her neck and chest was still flushed and aglow, the white smooth curving lines of her waist and legs were geometries my brain struggled to take in.
"Let's go to my place," she said suddenly, tossing a hand out to the side with a lilt of a laugh dancing across her lips.
"But, you're renting an off-campus house, right? Across town?" She stared at me, one eyebrow raised. "Through all the, uh, snow?" I tried to tear my gaze away from her to look pointedly out the window. Didn't happen.
"Well, sure," she said. "That's what snowshoes are for, right?"
"Uhhh." The part of my life not spent trundling along the well-worn path between the faculty housing and the antiquities building had been on expeditions in Egypt, Bali, and Africa. I wasn't even clear on what a "snow shoe" might consist of, but it sounded an awful lot like the first ingredient to a recipe for freezing to death.
I leaned against the counter, trying to appear thoughtful, but I was pretty sure Sarah could read me like a book because she shifted her weight, swaying to the other hip, jiggling everything just enough to make me forget whatever it was I was going to protest.
"No matter," she said. "I've got several pairs in my office in D-Hall."
"Uhhh."
She laughed, spun on her heel, and walked back into the bedroom.
"You think we can walk all the way to your place in these ‘snow shoes’ of yours?" I asked, quick-stepping to follow her into the bedroom.
"Of course. If I c
an't make it across Arkham in the winter, how would I ever hope to survive the expedition to the Antarctic?"
"Good point." Considering the secret plan I'd hatched over the week applying for the UFO expedition myself, I'd better buck up and see if I could figure out how to work these “snow shoes” myself.
***
A half hour later, we were standing in her office in the visiting professors' wing of Dwinelle Hall. She had shucked off her parka. It was quite the affair of down lining and fur. Like the pictures I'd seen of the Eskimos from northern Canada. As I was peeling off several layers of sweaters and removing my tweed jacket, I decided a parka had moved to the top of my shopping list.
Sarah's office was tidy. Her desk was an organized stack of papers and a Remington portable typewriter. Books lined shelves on all the walls. There was even shelving partially covering the window which had its heavy curtains pulled. Glancing at the titles, many seemed to be treatises on mathematics and physics. The shelving by the door was devoted to various languages, human physiology, and history. Stacked in the corner was a pile of wicker contraptions that looked like jumbled tennis rackets.
"You'll want one of the larger pairs," she said, walking over to the pile, "since you're heavier. The idea is simple. The snowshoes disperse your weight over a much larger area than your feet. That way you can walk on top of the snow, rather than sinking down into it."
I nodded, watching the way the C-shaped arc of her hair swung down as she looked for a pair that would fit me, the long curve of her neck sensuous in the warm glow of the electric lights of her office. "I'm a nine," I said.
"A what?"
"Shoe size. I'm a nine."
Miskatonic Dreams Page 3