Miskatonic Dreams

by H. David Blalock

  Froggie didn’t bring up what Hephzibah had disclosed about him being not quite human and neither did I. The subject sat between us, there but unacknowledged. We’d have to talk about it at some point, but not now. Now I was too tired and hungry.

  “Pull in here,” I told him as we neared Newburyport and the Happy Fisherman came into view. It was a diner with a giant fiberglass statue outside of a maniacally grinning old salt wearing a yellow Sou’wester raincoat and hat and was open twenty-four hours. I was ravenous. I ordered the New England Seafood Dinner, which consisted of a one-pound boiled lobster, an ear of corn on the cob, fried clams, and a cup of clam chowder, with a choice of blueberry pie or apple cobbler for dessert. We sat in one of the red plastic booths and I polished off two entire seafood dinners, with Froggie nervously asking if I was sure I was okay, and wasn’t I eating an awful lot?

  I told him that being dead had taken a lot out of me and I needed to restore my energy. After two dinners and an extra slice of blueberry pie I was feeling better. We got back into the car and drove to my parents’ house on Green Street. It was the first time Froggie had been there and he stared apprehensively up at the house. The downstairs was ablaze with lights, even though it was well past midnight. The curtains were open in the French windows of my father’s office and we could see him cross the room.

  “I guess he’s still up,” Froggie said. He didn’t seem pleased at the idea. A lesser man might have tried to escape by saying that he had to get back to school, but not Froggie. He walked with me to the front door and waited while I dug in my pocket for my keychain. “Do you think he’ll be mad?” he asked.

  My mother opened the door before I could fit the key in the lock. She was fully dressed, which was highly unusual for her at this hour. Normally she was in bed by nine, with a mystery book and a cup of cocoa.

  “Oh, honey! I was so worried about you,” she said, hugging me. “I kept calling your cell phone, but you didn’t answer.” She noticed Froggie. “Hello, Andrew. Thank you for bringing Lucy home.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Tisdale,” he said.

  I could hear my father asking if it was me and did I realize my mother had been beside herself with worry?

  The screen of my cell phone, I saw when I pulled it from the pocket of my jeans, was smashed. It wouldn’t turn off or on. It was as dead as I had been. Unlike me, it looked like it couldn’t be revived.

  My mother, always the good hostess, invited Froggie to come on in and say hello to Mr. Tisdale. Would he like something to drink? An iced tea, perhaps? Or a soft drink? Froggie declined her offer of refreshment. He trudged down the hall and into my father’s office like a condemned man going to the gallows.

  My father wasn’t alone in there. Bryce Ainslie, the President of Miskatonic, was seated in one of the wingback chairs in front of the fireplace where a log fire was crackling. He had a snifter of brandy in his hand and looked surprising healthy for someone who’d been dead. I wondered how he’d gotten there so quickly from Arkham, but then he probably hadn’t stopped to get something to eat, as Froggie and I had, and as Bram Stoker once observed, the dead travel fast.

  Mr. Ainslie and my father were boyhood friends. They’d met as unhappy fourteen-year-olds at Phillips Academy at Andover, where they’d been gleefully tormented by the upperclassmen. He’d been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor last year and it had looked like he wasn’t long for this world but then he’d made a miraculous recovery. I understood instinctively now, looking at him sitting there all ruddy-cheeked and fit, red pinpoints of firelight reflecting off the lenses of his eyeglasses, that he’d died, just as I had, and been brought back to life by the incantation in The Necronomicon. He gave me a cordial nod and I gave one back to him. Greetings, fellow formerly dead person, our nods said. This must be how Masons feel when they exchange the secret handshake.

  He turned his eyes to Froggie and the cordiality melted away.

  “Gilman,” he said coldly.

  Froggie smiled weakly. “Hi, Dean Ainslie. Listen, there’s kind of a problem with the ceiling in the special collections room at the library. I’m really sorry. I’ll pay to have it fixed.”

  Mr. Ainslie said he knew all about it. Vernal had telephoned him. “Vernal Thomas, the security guard,” he said, when Froggie and I looked puzzled. “He saw you leaving and he was concerned so he called me.” He let that sink in for a minute, before adding, “Vernal thought you were up to something so I went over there and discovered the damage.” He scowled. “That ceiling was over one hundred years old. No one does that kind of plasterwork anymore. It was irreplaceable.” He glowered at Froggie. “You’re expelled.”

  Froggie started to protest, but Mr. Ainslie cut him off. “Expelled!” he thundered. “No ifs, ands, or buts. Expelled permanently. No more swimming scholarship. We shouldn’t have given you one in the first place. The Gilmans are nothing but trouble. They always have been.”

  I said that if Froggie was expelled, then I wouldn’t be going back to school either. I’d go to the newspapers and tell them what had happened to me and to the college president and maybe to other people at Miskatonic. I'd tell how there was a book in the special collections room that brought the dead back to life. “Who’s the witch who brought you back?” I asked him. “Hephzibah said there has to be a witch present, was it her?”

  “Was it she,” my father said absently. He was finicky about proper grammar. “No, it wasn’t Hephzibah.” He shot my mother a warning glance, but she ignored him.

  “Nancy LaVerdier, from the humanities department,” she said brightly. “She’s Miskatonic’s official witch.” My father groaned. “Well she is,” my mother insisted. “She asked if I wanted to join her coven, but I was busy with the community garden and volunteering at the nursing home, so I said no.”

  I knew Professor LaVerdier. She was a motherly lady who wore floating, gauzy dresses, and whose office was decorated with wind chimes and crystals and dreamcatchers and all manner of New Age gear. I’d taken a class that she taught called “Mindfulness.” It involved reclining on yoga mats with our eyes closed while flute music played soothingly in the background. I’d gotten an A. Everybody who took the class got an A.

  My father regarded me silently and I stared silently back at him. His sphinxlike gaze usually made me look away (Dad could stare down the Devil himself) but now, having died and come back to life, I stared right back at him, cool as a cucumber in a deep freeze. Mr. Ainslie broke the silence by saying that I was welcome to go and tell my story to whomever I pleased. Nobody would believe me, not even the tabloids that ran front-page headlines about Big Foot having been captured and how the moon landing was a hoax.

  I said we’d see about that. The stare-down continued, with Dad giving me his patented gimlet-eyed glare. Froggie nervously shifted his size 14, extra-wide sneakers. My mother cleared her throat. Eons seemed to pass, until finally, Dad blinked. I wanted to cheer but I remained poker-faced.

  “All right, Andrew is not expelled,” he said. He raised a cautionary finger. “But he’s on probation. One word about this to anyone and he’s expelled, do you hear me?”

  That seemed like an empty threat but I said that I understood. Froggie apologized again. Mr. Ainsley compressed his lips and gazed stonily into the fire, swirling his glass of brandy.

  “Okay, then. I guess I’ll be going. Good night, everybody,” Froggie said, backing out of the room. My father and Mr. Ainsley didn’t respond.

  “Goodnight, Andrew. Come see us again soon,” my mother chirped, earning a hruumph from my father.

  I walked Froggie to his car. The sun was coming up and I was exhausted. Froggie jingled his keys, always a sign that he’s feeling uncomfortable.

  “I’m really sorry for everything,” he said.

  I said I understood and that my feelings for him hadn’t changed. I didn’t care what he was. He could be half-frog and half-monkey, it didn’t matter to me.

  He beamed. “That’s great. I swear I’m not half-frog and half
-monkey. Listen, do you want to come to Innsmouth and meet my family? They’re having a fish fry next weekend.”

  I said I’d love to. If they were anything like Froggy I was sure we’d get along fine.

  STUDENT ACTIVITIES

  Authorised Librarians Only

  DJ Tyrer

  “What on earth did you think they would say?” Zane asked.

  “I thought they’d say yes,” Theo said, frowning and brushing her dark hair out of her eyes. “Why else would I ask?” She plucked a book at random from a shelf and flicked through it without looking. It was a standard textbook and not what she was really interested in at all.

  “You know what they’re like about the restricted section. You might as well have asked the chief librarian if you could borrow her liver. You would have had a better chance.”

  “I don’t see why. What do they think I’ll do with their precious books?” she snorted. “I know how to handle them.”

  “It’s not so much what you’ll do to them as what they’ll do to you,” Zane said with a grin.

  “Oh, you don’t believe all that nonsense, do you?” Theo said with another snort. There were all sorts of stories about the dangers inherent in the volumes kept in the library’s restricted section. It was a rite of passage for freshmen to be told tales of those foolish enough to read from the dread Necronomicon or open a certain mouldy tome wrapped in human skin, usually to be dared to open a volume of dense Latin which looked terrifying with its antique type, but would prove to be a farming treatise or something equally innocuous. You soon outgrew such silliness.

  “Of course not,” he said. “But you certainly hear some weird stuff about the place and you have to wonder if the librarians believe it. I mean, have you seen that Gilman chick, the one with the big eyes? She looks like she’s in a permanent drug haze. Probably keeps a bong in her desk.” He laughed.

  Theo had to chuckle. “They probably make the nonsense up to try and scare us away, as if we’re little kids, to protect their precious books from our grubby fingers.” She sighed. “How am I supposed to do my research if they won’t let me near the materials I need?”

  “Change your thesis? Medieval metaphysics is a bit passé these days. Surely there is something more trendy you could try?”

  “But I’ve already started it, got it all planned out. If I change it now, it’ll put me back months and that’s not counting the time to get the change approved.”

  “As opposed to what? Not being able to finish it at all?”

  She sighed again. “What am I going to do?”

  “Well, it’s either change your thesis or break into the restricted section and take a look at the books you need.”

  “And how do I do that?” she said, rolling her eyes. “Have you seen the security they’ve got?”

  For a small university, Miskatonic was extremely well funded and had invested heavily in the maintenance and protection of its collection of rare books. That included not only state-of-the-art temperature and humidity controls, but also top-notch security. Where rumour claimed starving guard dogs had once roamed the stacks ready to devour unwary students, today they were protected by an array of CCTV, motion sensors, lasers and biometrically-secured steel doors. Suggesting she break in was like suggesting she go rob Fort Knox.

  “You forget,” he said with a grin, “I’m no slouch when it comes to computers. If you want in, I think I can provide the key.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I thought you were joking.”

  “I can do it, if you want me to.”

  “Okay...”

  “It’ll cost you.”

  “Oh. Really?”

  “Yes. If I get you in there, you agree to dinner with me at that Italian place. How about a date, eh?”

  She smiled. “Oh, I guess I could make the time.”

  “Excellent.” He bent and kissed her cheek. “Right, I’ll get off and make some arrangements. Book yourself into a study room and be ready at midnight to make your run on it. I’ll be running interference online. I’ll meet you in the bar for lunch. See you then. Bye.”

  “Bye.” Theo smiled in spite of herself. She couldn’t quite believe what she was agreeing to, the break-in or the date.

  Carefully, she manoeuvred her chair between the shelves full of books towards the main desk. Life would be easier if they widened the gangways between the shelves but she couldn’t see that happening unless the library expanded. Despite all the updated security for their precious books, the old building had a long way to go to improve accessibility.

  “Yes, dear?” the librarian at the desk asked in the sort of patronising tone people so often adopted with her. “What can I do to help you?”

  Theo suppressed a sigh and said, “I’d like to book a study room for tonight, if I might, please. I have lots of research to do,” she added.

  “Let me just check... Ah, yes, we have several free. Do you have a preference? Study room number two is nearer the water-cooler and number eight is nearest the washrooms.”

  “Number eight, please.” It was also the nearest to the restricted section.

  “Number eight it is, dear.” She tapped a few keys, then looked up from the monitor and said, “Right, if you just swipe your card. Can you reach?”

  “Yes,” she said, tight lipped. Theo managed to maintain a fixed smile as she swiped her library card over the scanner.

  “Right, all done. Please, familiarise yourself with the rules on our website and do let me know if you need any help. You can request books online and have them delivered direct to the study room for your convenience. Right, well, if that’s all? Have a nice day.”

  “Thank you.” Theo quickly headed away from the saccharine of the woman’s attempt to be kind and helpful. She built a pile of books on her lap and carried them over to the study room to do some research while she waited for midnight.

  ***

  The bleeping of the alarm she’d set on her phone woke Theo: ten-to-twelve, a chance to prepare for her raid.

  Just before midnight, a message from Zane appeared on her phone: Get ready.

  She quietly made her way towards the restricted section. The library was in semi-darkness. Although the doors were closed, it never entirely shutdown and, although put in a sort of twilight, was never entirely darkened. That, of course, was the risk she was taking. It was entirely possible a librarian was busy cataloguing volumes and she would be caught. She just had to hope Zane was watching over the CCTV and would warn her.

  Go. The message flashed up on her phone and she headed for the security door. The light on the lock, usually a forbidding red, had changed to a welcoming green. Zane had come through for her. She hadn’t quite believed he would. Should she? What if she were caught? She made up her mind. She would.

  Theo managed to drag the door open. She wished it were lighter, or better yet, automatic.

  The problem facing her now was that there was a substantial number of shelves and she had no idea where the books she wanted were. It was difficult manoeuvring amongst the stacks, harder than in the public section of the library. The gangway was barely wide enough for her chair to pass through and it kept snagging, and there was no space to turn around, making it even harder for her to search.

  Once again, Zane came to her assistance, directing her to the shelves she wanted. It seemed as if the books she needed were all in the same section. She paused to pull on a pair of gloves suitable for handling such fragile volumes. She might be breaking the rules but she still respected books.

  “That’s handy,” Theo said to herself as she took the first book down, a large heavy tome with wooden covers.

  There was no nearby table or desk to work at. She guessed there was a conservation room nearby where the books could be cared for and, probably, there was a reading room somewhere for those lucky few allowed to examine books in here. She laid it carefully on her lap and carefully turned the pages. She was glad to have a tablet to record her
notes on. Much easier than trying to scribble them down.

  As she worked, Theo became aware of what sounded like footsteps. She muttered a word her mother would disapprove of and headed as quickly as she could down the gangway to the end by the far wall, where she was able to reverse into a recess. She heard a clunk as she backed into a stand. She looked over her shoulder. There were two large glass jars filled with dust. She didn’t have time to wonder what they were. She thought she saw a shadowy figure pass the end of the gangway. She tried to stay silent but was certain her breathing must be echoing about the place.

  She messaged Zane: Is a librarian in here with me?

  Negative, came his response, you’re on your own.

  You sure?

  I’ve checked all the cameras – nobody there. Just you – I can see your legs. ;-)

  You sure?

  Yes. How many times?

  She must have imagined it. She listened now and heard nothing. Probably just her guilty conscience.

  She eased herself out of the recess and returned to work. Photographing relevant pages saved her a lot of time. She would examine them in detail later.

  The sound of footsteps came again. She froze, listened and watched. Was that movement over there?

  She messaged Zane again. He replied again she was alone. Perhaps she was hearing the echo of footsteps from somewhere else in the library.

  Cd be the ghost of old Armitage. ;-) Zane messaged.

  Trust him to bring up ghost stories! Doubtless, back in his room, comfortable and snacking, it was fine for him to suggest nonsense. Here in the half-light, with her nerves on edge, examining books filled with woodcuts of grotesque demons, despite not believing in such things, such ideas nestled uneasily in the back of her mind and made her feel as if she were being watched by some unseen observer.