Miskatonic Dreams

by H. David Blalock

  When the end came, I had not expected it.

  I was in the kitchen when I heard her. As I ran up the steps I realized now that the screams were different, as if a multitude of voices were screaming with her, piping and mewling through her own suffering in a mocking melody of cruelty and sadism. I burst through our door and stepped into an overwhelming odor, a thick and sour smell that rumbled with human filth and bile; the stink of age, a hall of corpses that had not seen the sun for decades. The bed was soiled in dark blood, shining like oil in the sunlight and trailing off into the restroom.

  Lisa was in there. Retching, screaming, and weeping between wheezing gasps which fluted through gurgling and vomit. The substance that littered the floors, covered the toilet was thicker and darker than anything I had thought a human body could make. It bubbled in some places, still hot and oily from her insides. I covered my nose with my sleeve. I will never forget the noxious stink of that room, a fungus bursting open from a worn and dried eye-socket.

  On reflex, I flushed her vomit and began to hold her hair back when she cried even louder than before, a suffering woman learning that she had been damned.

  “Michael…” she whispered. “…It was looking at me.”

  IV

  What is in a funeral? People dressed in black, a cloudy sky, a hollow church filled with those who suddenly begin to think about heaven and hell. A wooden box, desperate well-wishes. White flowers. A portrait. The kind wishes of a stranger at a pulpit. Songs and memories.

  Songs and memories to be buried down in the dirt with the deceased.

  Though I would not know it, Lisa’s funeral began my decline into unending personal weakness. Every kind word, every well-wish and stated sympathy drove me further into the ground, staking me down in the dark of my own misery until only the eyes of my children could bring me out. Eric and Isabell stayed with me for as long as they could, but they had a life in Miami and I was not willing to keep them from it.

  And Jordan, my beautiful baby girl, she had her own life to begin too. I wasn’t going to hold her back. It wasn’t what her mother would have wanted, so I made sure that we got her to college.

  “Are you okay, dad? Are you sure you will be okay, dad?”

  Yes, yes I was fine. I would be after all. I was still a tenured professor, a happy grandfather and a loving father. Life would have a lot more from me, I was sure.

  “You can come visit me any time.”

  Nonsense, darling. You’ll have your own friends down here soon enough and I am sure you will want more from your father than a simple, walking embarrassment. I love you, more than you will ever know, but I can’t believe that you would want me to just walk into your life unannounced.

  “I’ll miss you.”

  Oh…sweetie. I’ll miss you too. More than you’ll ever know.

  And so I came to the house, to a home strange and alien in its hostile silence, adorned with pictures that belonged to some other, happier man. Deceased dresses hung in the closets, phantom fragrances from long dead perfumes hung quietly to an oaken desk with no one to sit at it. There was the garden, orphan orchids which I quietly attended to though it seemed a blasphemous invasion of someone else’s sanctuary. I could not bear to see them go, too; all the wonderful colors. Losing them would have been too much for me.

  It was with that realization that the creeping force first came to me. The force that told me as I reached for my medication that there was no one left to stay strong for. Lisa, Eric, Jordan. They were all gone now. And after all, it was true, I thought better without the medication. And soon I would need to return to my duties as professor.

  It was then that I heard the long sigh of Mrs. Dumont, followed by that of Lisa.

  I abandoned my medication.

  ***

  My return to Miskatonic was that of a brave, sober face. My students thought I was enthusiastic and full of a remarkable happiness after such a tragic loss. My lectures, the evaluations explained, were full of a new life and vibrancy, a certain intoxicating theatricality that drew them in so that they could all recite the gentle cadences of Poe and the silver-tented stanzas of Baudelaire. My writing had gone down considerably but so few of my colleagues were interested in what I had to say and even less of them expected me to recover from my wife’s death. Some of them remarked under hushed breath they were surprised I had not retired altogether.

  If they had gotten close enough to smell my breath, they would have understood how I got by.

  At all times, there was a flask next to my heart; in a coat pocket or tucked away in a desk drawer. I had to keep up appearances, so I force-fed myself regularly even though I wasn’t hungry with my alcohol-deadened stomach. The first week was difficult, but my flask was my lifeline, my boat away from the grief of Lisa, my own… condition. A little numbness on my brain which made me smile.

  Sure, there were those who suspected, but they did not want to interfere out of a mix of respect of privacy and the dread of encountering a problem that was not academic. If students reported me to the department head, if the dean ever knew, I am not sure. I do not remember much from that time at all, other than the horror which my own home gave me.

  The nights were the worst. I could no longer sleep in that room, in the bed where Lisa had died. I had thought, before taking up the bottle, that disposing of the mattress would be enough, that removing the stain of her ink-black blood from the house might put my mind at ease. But it did not, nor could whiskey or bourbon make me tired enough to go to sleep there. The house became daunting, empty and huge without children or love, the walls and rooms unfolding into a labyrinthine prison the night permeated through every corner and crevice.

  There was no safety in the television, whose inane babble became a dull murmur the more time I passed in loneliness, nor did I feel at home when the lights were on. The only thing I could bring myself to do, my lifeboat-ritual, was drowning in two fists of whiskey before falling asleep on my couch every night as if I were an unwelcome guest in my own home.

  And even then, the house seemed much louder than I had ever noticed.

  I don’t remember the exact date or even the exact time I first noticed the creaking, but I remember how cold I felt when I first heard the sound. It must have been late, 3 a.m. or some unholy hour, when it woke me from one of my stupors. My first thought was that someone was in the house, walking above me on the second floor on light, uneven steps. When I went upstairs, irrationally hoping that either Lisa or her ghost had returned to me, I found I was still alone.

  Still alone.

  The creaking became worse as winter approached. What began as footsteps became a pulsating current of cracking bones and snapping branches. Sometimes it would begin small and then become rapid-fire. The sound that fireworks make. The alcohol was not enough to silence them nor insure my sleep at night. I would sit up, red-eyed and sobbing as I hugged pictures or pillows to provide myself with an artificial comfort.

  I thought about moving but the thought made me sick. It would be more definitive, more troubling than burying Lisa had been. It would be her final, irrevocable death. And after all, the home belonged to Eric and Jordan as much as it did myself. I convinced myself that I had no right to sell it.

  So I stayed; drunken, depressed, red-eyed and insomniac for a whole year. I am not sure what I said to keep Jordan from visiting or to stop Eric from calling, but I know it came from a place of superhuman hurt, disingenuous words that I thought were to protect them from me as much as they were to protect myself from responsibility. I had digressed into a private childhood, ill-equipped and ill-mannered, only superficially happy in public, alone in a creaking house. A whole year, gone forever.

  It was the death of Mrs. Dumont that woke me from my nightmare.

  An email informed me, with the subject heading “Katie Dumont.” I immediately recognized William’s last name, which resonated somewhere underneath the fathoms of alcohol and darkness. My heart rippled, hoping that someone had heard from William so t
hat I could help him regain his scholastic footing.

  Instead it was his older sister, Katie, who informed me that she had been instructed by her mother to invite me to her funeral. Katie told me her mother had heard through other friends at Miskatonic about the loss of my wife and that she was very sorry to hear about it but did not have the strength in her final months to write me herself. She said her mother would have been honored if I would attend her ‘final sending off.’ The subject matter was so sad, so dreary and yet Katie wrote it with such ease and levity that I wondered if she was even sad at all. The funeral a week away, I responded that I would be there and made up my mind to arrive sober.

  The service was small, attended by just a few surviving distant relatives and friends from across the country who had flown a long ways to see her off, and Katie Dumont. I did not notice her beauty immediately. It was tinged with a certain strength-in-sadness which I admired above all else. Her dress, black and long, covered everything but her ankles while she left her long brown hair untied to so it went down to middle of her back. She was in her mid-thirties, I was to learn, and had been marked by her family’s tragedy in a far different way than William.

  “Ms. Dumont,” I approached her after the priest had given his final rites over the open grave, “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”

  Her smile was earnest but weak. She rubbed her eyes lightly with the back of her hand and I could see the marks of redness which she had attempted to cover with dark make up. “Professor Archer. Thank you for attending. My mother thought very highly of you. For what it is worth, William did, too.”

  I asked the question reflexively, knowing that I shouldn’t. “Have you heard from him? Did your mother learn anything after we spoke last?”

  She shook her head, sigh quivering under strain and insomnia. “No…no. I’m afraid not.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  She did not say anything else and I was left to sit silently in thought and mourning as the rest of the well-wishers approached her. I thought back to Jordan, to Eric, who I had so callously abandoned and I wondered what they would say at my own funeral. Would they be there, standing over my tombstone, remembering the man who stayed up with them late at night, the man who drove them to soccer games and rock concerts, who washed them and loved them? Or would they remember the incoherent, hateful drunk who pushed them away because he was too weak to take care of himself?

  I suppose this was the first gift Katie gave me. Though she was to give me a few more.

  ***

  Katie Dumont contacted me the day after the funeral. She explained she was sorry she could not talk to me more. She had been very busy at the time and concerned with so many things that thinking about William was too much at the time. She remembered, however, her brother spoke very fondly of me and invited me to come to her restaurant so we could talk about him.

  “Her restaurant” turned out to be a popular, four-star seafood restaurant. The place was expansive, a well-lit two-storied building with wide windows and tables neatly decorated in white cloth. On the walls hung beautiful paintings from across New England, little coastal fishing villages with idyllic white birds flying into the sunlight. You could smell the ocean out of sheer artistic gentleness. The waiters, all in suits and ties, knew of my arrival and simply nodded to a table close to the kitchen. Katie, still dressed in black out of formality rather than mourning, her hair now tied back rather than long, smiled at me as I sat down across from her.

  “Feel free to anything off the menu.”

  “What? Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. I own the place, so who is there to argue with?”

  Katie then explained, at my prompting, she had learned to cook at a very young age. Her mother, who had been pampered her entire life the way aristocratic generations were, had not learned to cook until it was too late and when their father disappeared, it was Katie who helped her mother prepare the meals. Her interest was that of a hobby at first but grew into a passion in her teenage years, when she won competitions all over the nation. Though she had several cooking degrees she attributed her success to her Master's in Business from Miskatonic (who could have guessed?) and the inheritance her father left her, which she used to purchase the property and her first restaurant.

  “The first place was an absolute sty, I’m afraid. Even a Master’s in Business does not guarantee immediate success. It was me and two other chefs at first, serving out of this greasy little diner. I was thrilled when we had enough positive buzz to use the money dad willed me and open this place up.”

  “You’ve done very well for yourself.”

  “Well, wait until you try the food. I hope my recipes will impress you. I am told being a prodigy runs in the family. William had his books and I had my plates.”

  The name bubbled back into the conversation and the tone immediately shifted. I told her all of my fond memories of William and she told me some of her own. She told me about the brave little boy who never slept with a night-light, the smiling boy who became a man too quickly when he hugged his sister and told her that he would always take care of her. The young man who liked to fish, who stayed for days in the library during summer vacation so he could soak up other worlds before having to dive back into his own. Then came the sad stories.

  “I’ve felt guilty,” I admitted. “I had hoped that I could find William. I knew he suffered from depression and I thought I could help him with it.”

  She shook her head. “William wouldn’t take his medication. There was no one who could have saved him but himself.”

  “You refer to him in the past tense?”

  She stopped. The food came out and she stared into her chowder before continuing. “Yes, I suppose so… He would have been home otherwise. He loved mom so much, there’s no way he would have let her go without saying goodbye.”

  We ate. The meal was far better than I expected.

  ***

  I reached out to my children, Jordan first.

  Making peace with her was easier than I expected. Children can be so forgiving if you give them the chance. When I told her that I had found someone, I was not sure what her reaction would be. Hesitantly, she supported me.

  “Everyone needs to be happy, dad. You deserve it.”

  Eric was harder, more reluctant to speak with me. I had betrayed his trust in a deeper, more biting way than when I had withdrawn after his mother’s death. Eric could understand sadness, hurt, and the desire to be alone but he could not fathom what he called a “betrayal to mom.”

  “Give him time. He just needs to wrap his mind around it,” Jordan told me.

  So I began regularly seeing Katie, who was Catherine to her business associates. Though she was beautiful, which I came to realize each time I held her hand or she kissed my cheek, it was her strength and intelligence that drew me to her. Her confidence, her inability to take the lesser end of a deal or be treated as anything less than exceptional was a strength that rejuvenated me after my long sojourn into the bottle. Sometimes on our dates, she would drink a glass of port or scotch and I would look on thirsty as the back of my throat itched with desire. She would notice and offer me a drink, but each time I was called upon to refuse. When I finally told her of the misdeeds I had committed with the enabling numbness of alcohol, she stopped drinking on our dates. I told her she did not need to, but she would not hear of it.

  So I became happier, more lively and coherent than I had been in my lectures in some time. My colleagues, before impersonal and distant, were emboldened by my sudden change and stopped by my office often as if to capture a bit of my life for themselves. The students, too, took a greater interest in my work and encouraged me, albeit indirectly, to begin writing a paper on the satirical nature of Poe’s lesser-known works. Before I knew it, The Humorous Edgar Allan Poe had become a book project aided by two undergraduates and a graduate student.

  On most weekends, I would drive to Providence, eat at Katie’s restaurant, and continue down to walk thr
ough some of the oldest streets in the region. Somehow when we were together, two people characterized so thoroughly by sadness, we were able to abandon the darkness of our collective pasts and walk towards something better. We both felt it, I’m convinced, and I began to truly believe that it was what Lisa would have wanted, for me to be stronger and happier than when she left me.

  After our dates, we would retire to Katie’s large apartment in Providence’s most up-and-coming neighborhood; trendy enough for her and yet quiet enough for me. We would make love early and talk until our eyes forcibly shut themselves. It was a young love between two old souls that made ours special.

  Unforgettable.

  V

  Answering my door at 9 a.m. on a Wednesday, the last person I expected to see was William Dumont. For a moment I could not recognize him. His hair had become long, curled, and disheveled, with thick gray streaks running through the black like milky varicose veins. He had grown a beard, thick and prophetic, through which he gnashed his teeth audibly. He was paler, the palest man I had ever seen then or since with a somehow longer face which, even beneath the haggard redness of exhausted eyes, I recognized. I gaped, staring at him and then letting my eyes fall to the strange symbol tied to his neck, a pendant that looked like a tangle of snakes centered on a mass of teeth with a single eye in its mouth.

  I could not find the words to even say hello, so he let himself walk past me. The air behind him carried the matted aroma of bile and the sweet scent of rotting fruit. I gagged, but overcame my revulsion with amazement. He sat down on my couch, crossed his legs, and looked at me expectantly to follow.

  “I suppose you are wondering where I have been, Dr. Archer.”

  “Well, William, yes…Yes! For God’s sake, William – ”