Miskatonic Dreams

by H. David Blalock

  "Oh, that doesn't matter. The snowshoes strap to your regular shoes or boots. It's just the diameter that keeps you afloat, see?" She held up a pair, showing the leather straps crisscrossing the middle. "And we have got to get you a better coat! How have you made it through winter before now?"

  I laughed. "By staying my office! I only venture to climates where I can catch malaria as opposed to 'the death of me.'"

  That made her laugh.

  Magical.

  She handed me the snowshoes and grabbed her leather satchel from where it sat propped against the leg of her desk. It appeared full of books and papers. She slipped something from her desk drawer into the outer pocket but I couldn't quite make it out before it vanished into the bag.

  ***

  After the first twenty minutes, I felt I had the hang of the rolling duck-walk gait and was chuffing along merrily beside Sarah. I lit my pipe and filled the air with spicy billows as I puffed like a steam train. Although my body had to work to keep its balance in this awkward walk, it was marvelous how my mind was clear to think about problems endemic in ancient language translation. Ok, really I was remembering Sarah standing naked in the soft filtered light of my kitchen. But the point I'm trying to make here is that it could have been thoughts on research. Right? The whole snowshoe walking business encouraged introspective thought.

  "You're a natural!" She grinned as she looked over at me.

  I gave her a nod of agreement as we neared Arkham River.

  As we reached the apex of the bridge, she stopped and waited for me to pull up next to her.

  "Let me show you something," she said.

  She used her mittened hands like seal flippers to whoosh the heavy snow away from the decorative metal mesh between the pillars that lined the bridge. I'd never noticed what was on the sides of the bridge, but then, whenever I went this direction I was on a bus heading from campus down to the harbor. As she swept away the snow, I could see things hanging from the mesh. Padlocks?

  "Some grad students showed me this one at the end of Orientation Week when I first came to M.U. in August."

  "What are they for?"

  "They're symbolic. Lovers lock them to the mesh to symbolize the permanency of their love. Very sweet, don't you think?"

  "Very. But why on the bridge?"

  "Well, it's where the mesh is!" she laughed. The curve of her smiling lips carved an arc of joy in my heart.

  Sarah reached for her leather satchel and pulled a small padlock from the front pocket.

  "Come closer," she said. She took my hand and, placing the padlock in my palm, she wrapped both of her hands around mine. Together we closed the lock around some of the mesh. She pulled the key out of the pocket of her parka and held it up for me to see. She locked it, then winked and tossed the key over the edge of the bridge. The wind was strong enough to tug the metal key a little further down river before it vanished into the drifts that had built up across the frozen surface.

  "Well, Sarah, you realize sympathetic magic has now locked us together until this mesh rusts away."

  "Aww you're turning blue. Does that mean you're in love?"

  "Yes, and freezing solid. Let's keep moving so my poor wardrobe choices can keep me warm enough to maintain my usual squishy consistency."

  We tried walking off arm in arm but after a few stumbling steps with tangled snowshoes, we settled for just walking off.

  ***

  The second week of January came all too quickly and with it the thundering herd of student faces mixed of equal parts excitement and trepidation. Sarah and I were thrust back into real life.

  I pushed a dark and heavy-bound tome to the side of my desk blotter along with my notes. As I massaged my temples, the shadows in the corners of the room that were writhing closer while I worked the translation, receded. Dr. Sutton had uncovered this particular book from a shop in Cairo known to trade in illegal antiquities and even less savory items. I stared into the corner where the ceiling met the walls. The lines of perspective warped and twisted before settling into their usual three-dimensional axis lines. I drew a hand across my face, scrubbing at the stubble on my cheeks.

  Sarah and I were spending our free time, what there was of it, between her place off-campus and my place just across the quad from her office. I was getting damn adept at the whole snowshoeing thing, and I was now the proud owner of an honest-to-goodness parka and fur-insulated snow pants. These days I was quite comfortable on our cross-town treks.

  ***

  February rolled around, bringing even more wind, but the snow seemed to have ended for the season in Arkham. I didn't mention it to Sarah, in part because I was afraid she might think of our relationship as limited to the time before she left for Antarctica, but I had sent in an application to the UFO expedition as an on-team language specialist back in January. While I was a little afraid she might not want me there, I figured the team-leader might be interested in taking along someone who could perhaps decode an instrument panel, alien war plans, or something? And the draw of the science was undeniable. You can’t drop an opportunity like that in front of me and expect me to not clamor for involvement.

  I walked from my office across the courtyard. My thoughts were only half on where I was headed when I realized Dr. Bellingham was waving towards me from the physics hall. I made a "who me?" motion with my hands and when he nodded I veered toward where he stood on the steps, puffing away at his pipe. The morning wind had died down and his head was wreathed in smoke.

  "Ah, Dr. Fields! Just the language specialist I was looking for."

  "And what pray tell can I do for you, Dr. Bellingham?" I smiled, shaking his proffered hand.

  "No, I mean you're just the language specialist I'm looking for – literally! Your application for the Antarctic Expedition was approved and budget is being allocated. You're going to see some penguins with your own eyes, my good man."

  "See a what?"

  "Penguins... Never mind, it’s just a kind of crazy-looking bird that lives in the Antarctic."

  Dr. Henry Smith pushed through the doors at the top of the stairs. "What's up, men?"

  "Penguins, apparently," I said.

  "Oh, good one, Fields!" Dr. Smith guffawed as he walked past us and out into the courtyard.

  "Huh?"

  Dr. Bellingham leaned in just a little and whispered, "Penguins are aquatic and don't fly."

  "Anyway, you're serious about my application? I'm approved?" I asked, turning toward Dr. Bellingham, trying to get us back on point.

  "Yes, indeed. You'll need winter gear. It's fall there and the weather is unpredictable. We're trying for the latest we can go before the winter snowfalls start. Ideally, we'll hit it at the snow's low-point so we can finish digging through the permafrost to the UFO site."

  "I see. I would have thought we'd leave in the Southern Hemisphere's early summer. The late date is surprising."

  "If we were sailing, we would have, yes. But we'll be flying in a Boeing 80 aeroplane! Very exciting you know, this flying business." Dr. Bellingham chortled at some joke I didn't get. "Anyway, the extraction team is down there already, excavating. Our job is to swoop in and grab the glory of the final shovel-fulls, my good man!" He made a scooping motion with the flat of his hand.

  "I bought a parka and snow gear, even snowshoes, last month."

  "That's perfect! Sounds like you're set, then. I'll have Jan send over the documents she needs signed for the grant. Get yourself ready, old boy. We leave on February 14th!" Dr. Bellingham slapped my shoulder, tapped his pipe on the step's railing, and went back into the lecture hall.

  Valentine's Day? Portentous? I shrugged, then frowned at the baying dogs in the distance. The Hounds of Tindalos seemed louder today. They were always drawn to me in the midst of translation work. I opened my mouth in a wide yawn, trying to clear the pressure from my ears. Sometimes that worked to make their incessant barking back off.

  Not this time. Oh well. I was giddy for the expedition and nervous about
Sarah's possible reaction.

  ***

  I needn't have fretted. Sarah was overjoyed when I told her not only had I applied to go on the Arctic Expedition, but I was accepted and added to the budget and research roster.

  Her arms draped over my shoulders as we stood in her office. "That's so wonderful, Horatio!"

  "And, we won't be apart on Valentine’s Day," I said.

  It seemed a little odd she didn't comment on the day herself, but I knew my perceptions altered unpredictably when I was in the midst of a translation. Hazard of the job. I'd been pushing to finish my work on Dr. Sutton's Cairo find before I left for the expedition. I'd just gone back and translated the title that morning. Titles are always a challenge because they aren't complete thoughts and they are in a style different from the text itself. Now that I was close to finished with the interior text, I had worked out the title: The Big Book of Tatterdemalion Thought and the Light of Anfractuous Being. That one made me roll my eyes, but I was confident in the translation. Honestly, I think Ol' Abdul Alhazred was the sanest of these ancient scribes. The Necronomicon is nice and straightforward. This one, on the other hand, was convoluted beyond belief.

  ***

  Departure day came quickly and I was eager to be off. I had finished Dr. Sutton's translation two days before and spent the last couple packing. Sarah and I spent dinner and the rest of Thursday night together, but I left her apartments early on Friday morning so I could see to the last of my packing. Since it was my first sub-zero-weather expedition, I didn't want to be caught out in the cold. I smiled at my mental joke and hauled my steamer trunk through my front door. The shadows writhed with unnameable colors in the corners as I turned off the lights. Maybe the frigid air of the South Pole would help me clear my mind of the unspeakable oaths that churned whenever my brain was quiet.

  I had not been to Arkham County's new aerodrome before. It sat high on a stony bluff overlooking the gray seas about halfway between Arkham and Innsmouth. I was glad when my cab pulled onto the graveled side-road before we followed the turnpike down into Innsmouth. Something always seemed fishy about the stories I'd heard from folks who'd been there.

  The wind blew stronger on the high bluff. A windsock snapped in the gusts as we pulled up next to a tin-sided building that looked like a can of tomatoes laying on its side, half-buried in the dirt. A large biplane was pulling out of one of the two low hangar tents as my cab pulled up. I could see it rocking as its wings caught the blustery wind. My throat was dry. All my moisture seemed to be flowing out my hands which I continually wiped on my pants. This would be my first time flying and I admit I was more than a little nervous. Excited too, don't get me wrong, but the adrenaline from the thought of complete detachment from Earth made the nerves at the roots of my teeth feel all ajangle.

  I realized I was the first one there as I see-sawed my trunk through the door. It wasn't much longer before the rest of the team started to arrive. I was embarrassed in no small part to realize I had packed heavier than anyone else. Dr. Bellingham was the third arrival and he pushed the door open with his shoulder. He was carrying two valise bags. Together, they were less than half of the volume of my one trunk.

  "Good morning Doctor!" I called to him as the wind slammed the door shut.

  "Ah, Dr. Fields! Bright eyed and bushy-tailed, I hope?"

  "Indeed, although I fear I may have over-packed?"

  "Not to worry, Dr. Fields, our bags will fly out right behind us in a cargo plane along with some additional excavating equipment. Our aeroplane will only carry the expedition team."

  Fashionably on time, Sarah exited her cab and came in through the door in a rush. She had a brown leather valise bag and her parka thrown over one arm. Her red hair danced around her head as she fought the wind to keep the door open long enough to get her arms and legs through before it slammed shut.

  I swallowed hard, looking out the window as the brushed aluminum plane rocked, its wheels chocked, next to the packed-dirt runway. I turned to Dr. Bellingham. "Are we going to be okay in this wind? Flying, I mean?"

  Dr Bellingham slapped my shoulder. "Of course, my good man! Word is, flying into a headwind makes it easier to take off. It's all in the wind speed over the airfoil you know." He let out a hearty laugh.

  Sarah grabbed my arm and spun around to face me. "Oh I do so love to fly, Horatio!" She tittered her giggle. I frowned when she started coughing.

  “Are you okay?”

  “It’s just the wind, Horatio. Anyway, aren’t you excited for the flight?”

  "Well, I didn't tell you earlier because I'm trying to be brave and all, but this will be my first time my feet have ever left the ground.” I thought for a second then added, “Well, upwards anyway. I did rappel down a cliff one time in Zimbabwe."

  "You do realize it's like your magic, only based on real physical science. Speaking of magic, I read that one of the first hot air balloons came down in a village outside of London and the villagers were so frightened and in awe they attacked it with pitchforks and wheat threshers. Can you imagine?"

  All Sarah had to do was keep my brain occupied by thoughts like these for several days while we flew south and everything would be great.

  ***

  We flew for a total of eight days and slept in many places new to me. When we touched down in Argentina, there wasn't even a gravel or dirt road to put down on. We landed in open fields and in about three hours a wagon pulled by two horses trundled over a ridge and down toward us. There were gasoline barrels in the wagon and our pilot and copilot took turns at a handle, pumping fuel into our plane while the cart driver smoked a string of cigarillos. The crew from our cargo plane set up tents for us all and we watched the late summer sunset cast its god-rays up from beyond the beautiful southern mountains that jutted from the grassy plains like dragon’s teeth in a child's drawing.

  It was a warm evening in Argentina, but the next day would bring us to the Antarctic continent. I had no idea what to expect. Icy blizzards? Mosquito-ridden melted permafrost swamp? Sarah shrugged when I asked.

  "I flew down less than a year ago when they identified the crash site but the winter season had already started here in the southern hemisphere and it was all ice with deep drifts of powder snow that the wind carved into white dunes," she said.

  "Sounds beautiful. Cold, but beautiful." I'm sure I went doe-eyed, but I didn't care, as I thought back a couple months to our Solstice break together.

  "It was cold, alright. And very stark. Two of our expedition team went snow-blind while we were constructing base camp."

  "How was the site found? Most of the expeditions I've been on have been to sites that are steeped in generations of folklore. Ancient cities shrouded in myth, that kind of thing. The indigenous people may not remember where or what was there, but their stories hold clues we use to search. Are there even people that far south?"

  Sarah took a sip of the coffee that sat on the folding camp table next to us, then looked out toward the red glow of the clouds wreathing the peaks. "No, there are no people down there at all. Penguins, though. Some quite large." She laughed, and I smiled. I had looked up the amusing tuxedo birds during the time when I was waiting for my application to go through for the expedition. "A Doctor Xavier, who was in Machu Picchu at the time, saw the fiery re-entry trace across the night sky while he was on an antiquities dig in 1926. Quite dramatic, I understand. He made copious notes of direction and angle and when he left for Lima some five months later, he telegraphed some of the information to Miskatonic and sent letters and drawings as a follow-up. I happened to be in Lima at the same time and overheard a conversation between Dr. Xavier and some of the crew from his expedition at an outdoor restaurant in the Centro district." Sarah paused between sentences as she spoke. “Sorry,” she said. “Elevation makes it hard for me to breathe sometimes.”

  “Less oxygen up here,” I said, thankful I didn’t have to set up my tent myself.

  I watched the clouds as they shifted while the sky turne
d purple. The sun carved a brilliant jagged slash across the edge between peak and sky. A half-opened door between two worlds.

  The next morning, we packed up our tents and gear and left on the final leg of the journey to Tierra de San Martin, the Antarctic Archipelago.

  ***

  The view of rocks and snow rising out of a slate-gray sea was astonishing. As the plane banked to line up with a tiny row of tents and outbuildings below, I could see the vast expanse of white open up to where the horizon blended seamlessly with the white clouds. I felt like we were falling into infinity as gravity tugged on me in ways that my brain rejected without a horizon line to delineate up from down. We leveled out and touched down moments later. As we debarked, the wind was a frigid icepick stabbing at exposed skin. Our bags were already outside the other plane and several of us rushed over to find and shrug into our parkas as fast as we could.

  Over the howling wind, Dr. Bellingham shouted to be heard. "Grab what you need and leave the bags. The porters will bring them to our shelters.”

  "What about snowshoes?" I yelled.

  "No need!" Dr. Bellingham scraped his foot along the icy hardpack. "The wind has blown away the snow. All we have here is solid ice, the same ice that was here when Hannibal was crossing the Alps. C'mon people, let's get inside."

  Everyone followed Dr. Bellingham single file. I was behind Sarah, my eyes narrow slits to keep the cold out. The wind tugged and pulled our line into a jagged zig-zag as we crossed from the planes to a series of low wooden buildings which connected to canvas tents with so many guy-wires stretching the fabric and pinning it down they looked covered in spider webs.

  We stepped through a wooden door, stamping our feet on the metal grate just inside the threshold. The heat inside was a blast furnace after the cold outside.