Miskatonic Dreams

by H. David Blalock

  Virginia began to cry.

  Ezra let her and this time he sat there, quietly present. When she regained control of herself, he pushed onward with his questions and didn’t even acknowledge her tears. “Do you remember anything about what happened?”

  “A little.” She looked up at the ceiling but was seeing somewhere else.

  “Can you talk about it? Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I was at the party, the ZOR party—”

  “Zeta Omega Rho?”

  “Yeah, the Zeta Omega Rho party. It was fun—started fun anyway. There were a lot of people there. It’s the May Eve Dance,” she said, which Ezra corrected in his head to Walpurgisnacht, Witches’ Night. “All the fraternity and sorority office holders were in costumes.”

  “What kind of costumes?”

  “Nature stuff. Leaves and flowers. Horns and fur.”

  “Sure.” Ezra nodded. “Were you drinking?” She seemed hesitant at the question, so he quickly added, “You won’t get in trouble. The university passed a lifeline policy last year. We’d rather students live than die because their peers were worrying about ethics boards and disciplinary actions for getting wasted. So that’s not what this is about.”

  Virginia closed her eyes. “I was drinking. It’s just what you do. There are so many people there you get nervous, you know? I mean, I don’t know how you couldn’t get nervous.”

  “I understand. I’ve lived outside the Valley,” Ezra said. “Part of the reason I came back here was because I don’t like crowds.”

  Virginia turned her head and looked toward the wall. “It was fine at first,” she said. “Till there was a big group of us talking and I needed another drink and I started to go get it myself and then someone handed me one...”

  “Do you remember who?”

  “No, I don’t. I should but I don’t. But someone handed me one and I never do that. I know better than to just take a drink, I do, I really, really do, but someone handed me one and I took it without questions and I drank it.” She started crying again. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Still doesn’t make it your fault.”

  That seemed to help right at that instant. Later might be a different story but right then, it helped. Virginia sniffled and wiped her nose. “I started to feel… I don’t know… weird… just weird… and kind of sick to my stomach and then everything was like a dream. Like a bad dream. Like one of those… night terrors?”

  “You’re asleep but you’re not.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “You’re asleep but you’re not.”

  “Something is in the room with you and means you harm.”

  “No,” she said forcefully. “Not something singular but… somethings… plural. And then there was a weight, a terrible weight, and it hurts, it hurts a lot…” She trailed away as she talked, each word becoming both quieter and slower.

  “I want you to know,” Ezra said, “that however you’re feeling right now is how you feel. Doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong. It just is. And it’s okay as long as you remember it. It just is.”

  She found his eyes then and locked his gaze desperately as if she knew she needed to hear that, even if it didn’t seem to register fully, some part of her knew and wanted it and wanted to take that in and own it in the same way you would desperately cling to a dying flashlight during a blackout.

  Ezra repeated himself, then went on. “Listen,” he said. “Right now, you feel the entire universe is against you.”

  “That’s exactly how it feels,” she said. “It really, really does. Like the universe wants to squish me.”

  “Maybe the universe is against you.” He shrugged. “I mean, I don’t think that’s how the universe works. That idea always seemed both egocentric and narcissistic to me, but who knows? What I do know is that I’m not against you. I’ve got your back.”

  She mouthed thank you as she wiped both her eyes.

  “The next thing I want you to know is you can stop any of this at any time you want. That means talking to me, too. That means being here in the hospital. That means talking to any of the people I’m going to suggest. You have full say over all of this.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’ve already had an initial cursory examination. So that part’s done. Next, if you want to, I can have Rebecca come in. She can perform a forensic examination. Do you understand what I mean by that?”

  “I’ve seen SVU.”

  Ezra nodded. “When Rebecca comes in, she’ll explain to you everything she’s going to do before she does it. And you can stop anytime you want if you change your mind.”

  “Okay.”

  “But here’s the important thing, the medical evidence she takes can be stored for a full year under an anonymous number if you’re unsure whether you want to file a report with the police.”

  A slow exhale to find her breath and stave off further panic was her only answer.

  “If you do want to talk to the police now, Sgt. Michaels is still downstairs.”

  “No, no, no.” She shook her head almost violently. “Not right now.”

  “You have time to decide. You can also pursue ethics charges through the university, which is its own separate process that has nothing to do with the regular police and the courts. But we can go over that later.” Ezra gave her one of the fact sheets with the list of important University phone numbers. “After the exam, Rebecca will give you some pills for sexually transmitted infections and to terminate pregnancy.”

  Virginia began to cry again. This time he pushed on. “Do you want me to send her in?”

  “Yes,” she said forcefully. “I do.”

  ***

  After Rebecca went inside the room, Ezra mistakenly tried walking the halls to gather his thoughts. The hospital was far too busy. Doctors and nurses rushing down the corridors. The waiting room was full, packed with the coughing, the feverish, the bleeding, and the panicked. There were even several ambulances waiting outside to take psychiatric overflow down to Cambridge.

  When he gave up his search for peace and quiet, he headed into the enclosed vending area down the hall from Virginia’s room and made the first of many phone calls.

  “It’s never good when you call me this late on a Saturday, Gaskell,” the Miskatonic University Dean of Students said.

  Ezra paced along the row of machines and explained the mundane details of the assault quickly. When he was done, he leaned wearily against the soda machine and proceeded with the details that would never make any official report. “The girl is a Delta Alpha Kappa sister. She was at the Walpurgisnacht Celebration that Zeta Omega Rho throws every year.”

  The Dean chose his words carefully. This was a two-front issue for him. First, Zeta Omega Rho had long been the most powerful fraternity on campus. Their alumni were a who’s who of CEOs, senators, and entrepreneurs. The sisters of Delta Alpha Kappa had been linked to them since women were first allowed to attend the university. While not lacking in money or influence or famous and well-off alumni, the sorority was usually derogatorily called “The Brides” for how often sisters married ZOR brothers. Secondly, this was his first experience with the supernatural since assuming his position during the Spring Semester. He had only learned of the strange nature of goings on that took place on campus barely a month ago. “So you’re saying this was not just criminal but—”

  “Supernatural,” Ezra interrupted him. “She was drugged and restrained. She smells like black hellebore, which is burned to summon evil spirits. Even has the patches of irritated skin from contact. To me she likened what she remembered of the assault to a night terror, only with presences, plural, in the room.”

  “Son of a bitch.” The Dean released a ragged sigh. For the first time since they had known each other, he sounded like an old man. “I’m new to this part, you know. Completely new. Never experienced anything like it until the Shipka incident and the briefing from the Dunwich Committee for Student Safety that Morgan lead. ZOR is one of the oldest fraternities
on campus. Their alumni have sent a lot of money our way. The Smith-Kingsley boy is the current president of ZOR. His father plays golf with the University President and at least two members of the Board of Overseers are ZOR brothers themselves.”

  “I know,” Gaskell said. “Money is a get out of jail free card. And it buys you a radically different college experience despite what anyone wants to claim.”

  “It’s not as simple as everyone thinks either,” the Dean said. “If we just kick ZOR off campus, the fraternity can go rogue. I’ve seen that happen before. Assuming I can keep my job long enough to do it, that is.”

  “You know The Committee will back you. We’re not without sway.”

  “Sway, yes,” the Dean said. “Money, no.”

  “Money is the root—”

  “The love of money is the root of evil,” the Dean said. “That’s the quote.”

  “Then you’ve answered your own quandary, haven’t you?”

  The Dean chuckled. “Why didn’t you ever get your master's?”

  “I hate all the bullshit with higher education,” Ezra said. Before the Dean could follow up, he added, “I do the job I do because I like helping people through things no one else would.”

  The Dean grew quiet. Ezra listened to the hum of the soda machines to keep his own thoughts from wandering. He waited and paced, briefly blocking the door and scowling when someone wanted in for a candy bar.

  “Wait for the nurse,” the Dean said, finally. “As long as she confirms—”

  “She will.”

  “As long as she confirms, tell Michaels to radio in, then head to the Rho house. I’ll warn the night captain. You do what you need to do there. If MUPD finds anything, we’ll proceed the mundane route. I’ll push as hard as I can.”

  “I’ll alert the Dunwich Committee and we’ll take care of our part.”

  ***

  After the phone call, Ezra went back to the hall. Nurse Makepeace was still in with Virginia, so he quickly used his smart phone to login to the MU systems and look up Megan Sturbridge’s number. Luckily, her student records contained a cell number and everything was marked current. He called but she didn’t answer. He left a cryptic voicemail with his number and made a mental note to call her back later.

  He checked the clock on his phone. Shouldn’t be much longer but he needed one last thing before seeing Virginia again. It had been his weekend with the kids. Whenever they were at his house, he kept his messenger bag locked in the trunk of his car. On the way outside, he sent a quick text to Shirley Armitage, Wade Morgan, and Lyndon Rice. The Dunwich Committee on Student Safety needed to meet first thing Monday morning.

  Megan called him back by the time he hit the elevator.

  “Hello? Someone called me from this number.”

  Ezra sighed. Complaining about Millennials was the favorite pastime of everyone who wasn’t a Millennial but one of the things that did generally drive him crazy about them was none of them seem to ever answer their phone or bother to listen to a voicemail.

  “I’m Ezra Gaskell, Special Advocate from Miskatonic University. I need to talk to you about your friend Virginia Tarbox.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. One sec.”

  Ezra listened to a cacophony of voices, a bass throb and a dance beat, someone drunkenly yelling, muttered excuse-me’s, more than one bitch accusation, and then finally the shift into quiet. “Sorry, go ahead.”

  He repeated his name, explained his position briefly, then said, “Megan, I’m afraid that your friend Virginia has been assaulted. I’m here with her at the hospital. She wants to see you. She hasn’t told her parents or anyone else.”

  “I’m leaving immediately. I’ll be there in twenty or thirty minutes.”

  The quickness of her response startled him. “Do you need a ride?”

  “No, I’m sober,” she said and hung up.

  Ezra stared at the phone for a moment, unsure whether to be confused or impressed.

  ***

  Makepeace and Michaels were both waiting for him when he got to Virginia’s floor. Rebecca didn’t say anything. She nodded to confirm, then walked quickly away. Ezra made a note to check on her. Too many people forget about the trauma of first responders.

  “Well?” Michaels demanded.

  “It’s a go,” he said, then repeated everything the Dean had told him. The officer radioed dispatch that he was on his way to the Zeta Omega Rho house before he’d even made it down the hall.

  Gaskell knew he needed to work fast to do what he needed to do before Megan arrived. First, he checked on Nurse Makepeace. When he learned the she had literally just gone on break, he refused the offer to page her and headed quickly into Virginia’s room.

  When he walked in, she looked up at him with sleepy eyes. “You’re all done for now,” he said. “So get some rest. I’m going to stay here until you fall asleep or you friend gets here, okay? You still have my card?”

  She nodded and held up her hand to show that she still hadn’t put it down.

  “Good,” he said, quietly taking a seat and comforted in knowing the ward was already working.

  It wasn’t long before she fell into a fitful sleep. Ezra quietly locked the door to her room and unpacked his messenger bag on the tray table. The first things he removed were a Hand of Glory he kept wrapped in a velvet cloth and a candle rendered from the fat of a convicted killer he kept in a black storage box. When the murderer’s hand had been severed and prepared, it had been set to dry in a curled finger position. Ezra inserted the candle into the dry fingers, lit the wick, and invoked its power with a quick word of Aklo, the language of the Serpent Men that survived into the modern age as a language of magic.

  Thick, green candle smoke poured from the corpse’s hand and filled the room, ensuring Virginia’s continued sleep.

  Ezra turned off the lights and examined Virginia’s forehead with a small, handheld blacklight. He couldn’t tell if what he saw was bodily fluid or chlorophyll from plant matter, but there was enough there for The Sigil of The Gate to glow faintly on her forehead.

  Determined now, Ezra raised the lights but left the door locked and the candle burning. Even if someone did unlock the door, the soporific effects would strike any who entered. A quick glance down the hall, then he rolled the table over by her hospital bed. Standing at the foot, he took a few minutes to focus his thoughts. When his mind was clear and his intent as firm as steel, he began breathing very deliberately and rhythmically while chanting in Aklo.

  As those first alien sounds left his lips, his mind briefly turned to thoughts of his grandfather. He remembered the day the old man took him out to the barn and told him about what happened at the neighbor’s house when he was a boy, the thing that rampaged through Dunwich that most people pretended never happened, and the secret discoveries he made in the wreckage of that old barn.

  “I will teach you what I have taught myself, boy, and you will keep watch. Keep watch on your family. Keep watch on your neighbors.”

  Ezra banished the memories with a deep, deep breath. Thoughts refocused, he chanted until the rest of the room fell away, until there was only the girl, the hospital bed, and the forge-fire heat of his will.

  Gaskell twisted his fingers and moved them almost sensuously in the air, forming the branches of the Elder Sign. Each branch punctuated by both a sharp exhalation and forceful mental projection of one of the five protective keys. He did this over and over, each completion quickened the pace for the next circuit to follow.

  In the chambers of his mind, the strange twists of Aklo letters burned away the purely linguistic. Words became color, became feeling, became experience, became will and with will the words…simply…were.

  No symbology.

  Only existence and with existence came power, and from existence came power.

  Power fueled by will.

  “It is by the strength of my true will,” Gaskell said as he knelt at the foot of the hospital bed. He chalked the Seal of N’Gah fr
om memory across the smooth tile floor, quickly etching the primitive shape he had seen described by some as almost a bug, but to him always seemed a crocodile devouring something troublesome, which is exactly what he needed.

  The chalk form stared at him. He invoked its power. The crude shape glowed darkly, the mouth like lines seeming to bite the air, hungry to gnaw on the unseen. From the pocket of his sweatshirt, he drew a packet of the powder of Ibn Ghazi and opened it expertly with one hand as he continued his chanting.

  He scattered the powder across the air and as the thick, ashy dust settled, it revealed the other thing that had been forced upon the poor girl. A sickly mewling thing of ropey tentacles, sloppy mouths, and malformed goat legs, struggling to take astral root in her womb before burrowing through her light body into the real world.

  Ezra reached toward the Young. The thing seemed confused, as if there were no agreement between the many different parts of itself. Of the hundred little sets of mouths gnashing at the air, some bit to scare and others bit to suckle. Tentacles writhed at the threat of his touch, flinging spectral slop in attempted retreat and reaching toward him to claim him for their gruesome birthing. Another word of power, a contortion of fingers, a twist of the wrist and the ghost-image of her body rose off the bed as the thing was ripped from her and thrust into the mouth of N’Gah, the Eater of Foul Things.

  A deep exhale cast the dust aside and banished the gory feeding from Gaskell’s sight. He rose to his feet and quickly moved to Virginia’s head. When he was refocused and his breathing deliberate and under control, he began with the next stage. He circled the hospital bed widdershins seven times. Every step, he drew the Elder sign in the air and imagined casting it to his right where the strange branch-like sigil took root. When he found himself at last back at her head, there was an impenetrable forest, an Elder Wall, around her sleeping form.