Miskatonic Dreams

by H. David Blalock

  “It is by the strength of my true will,” he said, raising his hands to elbow height. He moved effortless from English to Aklo, chanting this latest invocation with perfect diction. His chest rose and fell, expanded and stretched, abdomen contorting like a gymnast’s, harnessing the primal power of his breath, for though creation began with a word and that word gave all words their power, that first act of naming was only possible due to the fuel of the breath.

  Ezra quieted as he pictured certain swirling forms of Aklo letters silently in his mind. He poured every ounce of his will into each of those letters, crushing them, pounding them together, until those letters become a single letter, become a new letter, and that new letter looked like a key and meant the same.

  He poured everything—his hate, his fear, his love, and his worry—into that mental image. He felt the energy taken from mind, from lungs, from heart, from genitals, until the key sigil was glowing like bright white fire.

  He pulled his left hand into his diaphragm and took a deep breath while the fingers of his right bent into the shape of a key and, “It is by the strength of my true will that I close the gate,” he rammed his fingers at the remnants of the sigil etched on her forehead.

  His fingers felt like metal.

  His fingers were metal.

  His fingers felt on fire.

  His fingers were on fire.

  And he struck. Virginia’s forehead rippled and for a second it appeared to him that his fingers pierced her skull and in that connection—

  …a memory hidden was called forth…

  … dank chamber lined with gruesome sigils and black suns bleeding sickly torchlight. Hooded figures chaining Virginia to a raised summoning dais far below the fraternity house. Voices chanting, “Ever praises for the Lord of the Wood…”

  From the crowd a figure with the head of a goat…

  She—Ezra—I—You stop screaming as the last iron manacle clasps over her—his—my—your delicate wrist. Thick censer smoke clouds the fetid air, the narcotic scent of the oil coating her—his—my—your forehead and the rhythmic chanting of the shadowy figures made it difficult to concentrate…

  —and then click! Ezra twisted his wrist and he felt the tumblers turn, heard them turn like they weren’t some imagined gears in an imagined keyhole in a real girl’s forehead but real gears, big and metal and loud, huge gears in that very room, large enough to crush him as they turned, and the sound was deafening and then the gate was locked.

  Ezra collapsed for a moment as the room returned. He was hot and sweaty and tired and drained. A part of him wanted to lie down there on the floor next to her bed and relent to the sleepy pull of the corpse candle smoke.

  But he didn’t.

  There was not time.

  ***

  Security paged Nurse Makepeace when Megan arrived less than ten minutes later. When Rebecca swung by for Ezra, the room was immaculate and clear.

  The two of them didn’t speak on their short jaunt through the jogging hallways to the emergency entrance.

  Ezra would have known who Megan was without the Greek letters on her sweatshirt. She had that look you could only get from money and the careful breeding that came from the desire to protect that money. Her hair was long and blond and full and lustrous. Her skin clear and smooth. She sat tall and calm and cool in the waiting area with her legs crossed and her chin high and her neck straight.

  Rebecca introduced herself, then said, “This is Ezra Gaskell, Special Advocate through the Miskatonic University Dean of Students Office. He’s going to fill in you in on a couple of things. When you’re ready to go back, come get me. I’ll be right over there.”

  Ezra sat down beside her. Megan held his gaze as he began, her blue eyes clear and attentive. When he was finished, she finally displayed some emotion. She leaned forward in her seat, elbows on her knees, face pressed into her hands. She looked down and he heard her take a deep breath, then suddenly she sat back upright, brushing tears he couldn’t see out of her eyes. “Thank you for helping her.”

  Ezra nodded.

  “Can I... Can I see her now?”

  “Sure,” Ezra said, standing. “Rebecca—Nurse Makepeace is right over there.”

  Megan brushed her hair back behind her ears and then extended her hand. He shook it and looked at her well-manicured nails and long delicate fingers. When he saw the underside of her wrist, he understood everything.

  ***

  A short time later, he found Megan standing silently at Virginia’s bedside. “She’s asleep,” Megan said.

  “She’s had a long night.”

  Megan stroked her forehead. “Poor thing.”

  “Before I go…” Ezra trailed off as he walked over to the tray table, sat his messenger bag down and pretended to rifle through it. “There’s some things I need to give you.”

  “Give me?”

  “Just some information I forgot to give Virginia and some things that might be helpful to you.” Ezra continued fumbling in the bag for another couple of minutes, then nervously said, “Where are you from?”

  Megan couldn’t hide her sigh or the disdain in her voice at his attempt to cover his apparent incompetence. “Originally?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oklahoma,” Megan said coldly.

  “What made you come to school here?”

  “My father and mother went to school here.”

  “What’s your major?”

  “Pre-med,” she said.

  Ezra nodded and resumed pretending to look for papers. Finally, when he could feel Megan’s annoyance threatening to break free of her manners, he said, “Maybe I left them in the car.”

  “Maybe you could—” Megan crossed the room quickly, reaching out to touch his arm. When she did, Ezra grabbed her wrist hard and held it still as he pulled the blacklight free. He flicked the switch and waved it over her hands revealing the same chlorophyll stains.

  Megan wrenched her arm away.

  “Someone who knows of the forbidden things…”

  Megan circled him, positioning herself between Ezra and the door. “How did you know?” she demanded as she pulled her sweatshirt over her hands.

  “Virginia described you as her best friend. You were so calm when I called you. Calm still when you arrived here at the hospital. The hellebore irritated your skin, like it did to Virginia, and you tried to hide it but I saw it on your wrist when you stood to shake my hand. That’s when I knew why she took a drink someone else handed her. That someone was you.”

  Megan smirked. “Your knowledge is meaningless.”

  “You were never her friend where you?”

  “Depends on what you mean. But guessing? From looking at you? No.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s an honor for her, really. To be chosen to receive the seed of the Lord of the Wood. Her future would have been bright if that moronic Smith-Kingsley had done what he was told and not let her wander off.”

  Ezra returned the blacklight to his bag and deliberately refastened the clasps. Megan watched him closely. Out of the corners of his eyes, he could see she was plotting, debating, judging scenarios.

  When she tensed and it seemed like she was going to act, Ezra popped the last clasp loudly into place and moved.

  Megan darted and raised her hands, but he continued on around her. She laughed the practiced and cutting laugh of a schoolyard bully. “You’re leaving? What was all that for? To seem smart? So what. Now you’re leaving and you’re going to do nothing?”

  Ezra frowned at the blond girl. “Oh no,” he said. “One of the lessons my grandfather taught me was what happens when people do nothing.”

  Gaskell closed the door gently and disappeared down the hall.

  ***

  The scandal around William Smith-Kingsley III’s expulsion for sexual assault and Zeta Omega Rho’s probation had mostly died down to a few tired and trollish opinion pieces in the school newspaper when the first summer session classes began three weeks later.
<
br />   Megan Sturbridge arrived early to her CHEM-C383 class to make sure she had a seat in the very front row, as close to Professor Wade Morgan’s desk as possible. The handsome young doctor was a best-selling author, multiple-award winner for his research in psychedelic substances, rumored to be up for consideration for next year’s Nobel prize, and a third generation instructor. Nothing could further her career quicker than being chosen as his research assistant.

  Megan felt absolutely confident that day. After the bungled incident with Virginia, she had been on the lookout for some retaliation, either mystical or academic, by Mr. Gaskell. When none came, she knew she had done well. She was certain her handling of the police investigation, the expert maneuvering that ensured Smith-Kingsley and only Smith-Kingsley was the focus, pleased the Lord of the Wood. She felt the raw savagery of his primal presence even amongst the sculptured green of the campus. And she knew she looked amazing. She had spent hours getting ready and half the boys out in the quad had rubbernecked when she walked to class.

  When the classroom door opened, Megan sat up straight, pulled her shoulders back, and raised her chin. Professor Morgan strode confidently into the room and looked around at all the nervous students. His hypnotic blue eyes quickly found her unwavering gaze amidst all the downturned looks.

  Megan held his eyes until he nodded at her appreciatively.

  ***

  Professor Morgan called her into his office two weeks later. On the walk over to the Chemistry Building, she was certain that all of Gaskell’s words had been hollow and empty. When she sat down across from Morgan and he offered her his research position, she knew her certainty had been well-founded. The Advocate—she retched at the weakness of that word—was nothing before the might of the Lord of the Wood.

  When Morgan cautioned her to consider before accepting, she was fearless in her response. “Yes, sir. I know the hours are long and the work dangerous, but I’m a meticulous worker and I never make mistakes.”

  Morgan looked at her and considered. Certain this was her do or die moment, she hit him with a clever observation she had been saving about his work in the entheogenic experience. As the Professor took her words in and considered, Megan covered her bases with a subtle shift in her seat she knew gave the unmarried professor a much better view of her breasts.

  “Congratulations,” Morgan said, standing abruptly. “Make sure Kathy has all the details she’ll need to get you on University payroll.”

  Megan left his office with a bounce in her step, her spirits buoyed by her smug certainty that she bore the black favor of the Lord of the Wood and the entire world was now laid out for her pleasure, all throats bared to await her ravenous fangs.

  ***

  Megan kept both her certainty and her smugness for six months.

  Late on a Saturday night at the beginning of a three-day weekend, Professor Morgan emailed her at the last minute. He needed her to come in immediately for some grunt work transferring hydrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide gases into small, low pressure cylinders to make a growth medium for cells.

  It annoyed her and interfered with her other plans but she agreed immediately. The work was so commonplace she knew she could knock it out quickly with more than enough time to still make late rounds at all the parties, a fact she made sure all her friends knew when she texted them about her delay on her walk over to the lab.

  Once there, Megan moved quickly. She left her big purse with her party clothes by the door then donned her lab coat and goggles over her worn jeans and dirty t-shirt. She arranged her workstation with practiced efficiency, checked the cylinders for cracks, and then signed out the tanks.

  The only thing that slowed her down was not being able to find her pressure gauge. She turned the lab upside down looking for it but couldn’t find it anywhere. She nearly emailed Professor Morgan right then to accuse one of the other assistants who shared the lab of incompetence or sabotage, but when she saw how much time she had wasted, she grabbed the digital gauge someone had left on the station next to hers.

  As she clicked the digital gauge, Megan noticed the small, precise writing on the oxygen tank: LOVE, EZRA.

  Her thumb released. The gauge sparked and all three tanks exploded.

  ***

  The Fire Department classified the explosion as accidental, attributing it all to Megan’s error. The investigator found that the tanks were turned up too high and she had used a digital gauge not rated for flammable gases.

  As a memorial for their daughter, the Sturbridge Family donated more than enough to revitalize the entire chemistry building by years end. And, indeed, that next summer, Ezra Gaskell, Professor Morgan, and the other members of the Dunwich Committee on Student Safety hung the plaque bearing Megan’s name above the recycling bin near the basement toilets.

  Residue

  Gregory L. Norris

  A day after the fire in the archives, Professor Rhodes summoned Shelby Collins into his office.

  “Have a seat,” Rhodes said, motioning toward two antique leather club chairs set before the acre of desk, most of which was covered in books, folders stuffed with papers, and the one bit of modern technology in the room—the professor’s laptop.

  Shelby took the only empty chair. Martin Bosanquet, who looked as miserable as Shelby felt, which was barely holding himself together, occupied the other.

  “In no way are either of you obligated to accept what I’m about to offer,” said Rhodes. He leaned back in the chair across from them, a dinosaur on large metal casters that croaked beneath the weight of the university’s tenured Director of Anthropology Science. “You’re not, but you should, because there are other, smarter students failing my class. It just so happens I like both of you one slim degree more than them.”

  Shelby choked down a heavy swallow and felt his ears pop, which made breathing, thinking, easier. “Sir?”

  “That inferno in the Wentworth Memorial Archives destroyed most of Miskatonic’s paper records. A shame—and why you’re both here.”

  “Do they know what caused the fire?”

  Rhodes studied Shelby, the professor’s blue eyes not blinking. “No, only that it looks suspicious, and that a treasure in historical documents went up in flames. But correct me if I’m wrong, Mister Collins—neither you nor young Bosanquet here are enrolled in the university’s Criminal Justice Program.”

  Shelby shook his head.

  “Then let’s leave the investigation of suspected arson to the law. No, what the fire has fortuitously afforded the two of you is an opportunity to better your grades.”

  Martin Bosanquet shifted in the seat beside him. “What sort of opportunity?”

  “Through extra credit, if you will. We lost a good many paper records in the fire. Fortunately, Miskatonic had already transferred most of them over to digital. But the conflagration has, understandably, unnerved those in charge of this university, and all department heads, myself included, have been tasked to do their fair share of housekeeping. To wit,” Rhodes said, “Miskatonic takes great pride in its various scientific collections, the sum total of which puts even the most metropolitan of museums to shame. Under your rumps, gentlemen, special vaults beneath the cellar contain troves of the beautiful, the ugly, the extinct, the mysterious, and the magnificent. And like those aforementioned museums, most of our collections are in storage, not laid out for display. What I need is one or preferably two of you to make my bit of housekeeping go quicker—students eager to up their grades by taking inventory. I need you to confirm the anthropology department’s historical treasures are all accounted for and exactly where they’re supposed to be according to the manifest.”

  Rhodes picked up a clipboard filled with printed pages off the clutter and tossed it toward their side of the desk.

  “Any volunteers?”

  ***

  Shelby didn’t particularly like Bosanquet, who always seemed to be fiddling around with his phone and was doing so again as they descended the back cellar steps beneath the Vu
lgath Anthropology Building. They reached the dusty stone landing, and the other man looked up from his screen.

  “No signal,” Bosanquet complained.

  Shelby answered, “I’m sure we’ll survive.”

  Bosanquet moved over to the nearest of a line of oblong windows riding just atop the ground and tried again. “Dead.”

  Shelby pulled in a deep, cool breath. “This way.”

  Holding the ring of keys, he found the correct door, labeled ‘17’, and the matching key, identified by a worn, round sticker fixed to the head. The door opened on another set of metal steps. These led down into darkness.

  The unpleasant, pungent-sweet odor of underground spaces filled Shelby’s next breath; air that hadn’t circulated or been disturbed in a long time. He hesitated. Going into that abyss beneath the anthropology building lost what little appeal it had held in Rhodes' book-lined office, even if it meant saving his grade.

  “Is there a light?” asked Bosanquet, breaking the trance Shelby had fallen victim to.

  Shelby exhaled, tucked the clipboard under his arm, and felt along the wall. He flipped the switch. Fluorescent bulbs crackled and ticked to life, throwing cold white light across the crowded subbasement space. He turned toward the cellar wall and those oblong windows which now seemed miles, not meters, away.

  “You sure about this?” Shelby asked.

  “Aren’t you?”

  Long seconds later, they were both descending the stairs, into the white glare.

  The vault in the subbasement was laid out in a rectangular space that Shelby imagined ran along the entire length of that side of the Vulgath Building. The ceiling was comprised of a succession of gray stone arches that would have looked more appropriate in a Gothic cathedral than the sepulcher built to house the anthropology department’s artifacts. Still, the air lacked the moistness he expected and was dry to the point of being mildly painful to inhale. The crates stacked atop benches and along walls glowed under the too-bright illumination, an impressive number of historical treasures. If Vault 17 was this full, he wondered about the collections of other departments—biology, botany, astronomy, even Miskatonic’s photography program, which was rumored to have in its possession some of the earliest and rarest studies of the craft.