Over the next few hours I managed to get some sort of a story out of him. The silly young blighter had still got the coronet with him when we had come out of the well the previous evening. He had then done something which exceeded even my estimation of his fat-headedness. He had taken it to show Felix Cutbirth.
Apparently, Bertie had struck up a weird sort of friendship with Cutbirth, owing to a mutual interest in folklore and local legend. It was undoubtedly Bertie who had alerted him to our schemes with regard to the well.
To cut a long story short, Cutbirth, no doubt with promises of “treasure chambers” and the like, persuaded young Bertie to take him to the well and make another descent in the small hours. Bertie’s memory collapses at this point, but one can guess the remainder.
We are both in a state of shock, and no doubt the reaction will hit us more heavily later on. Meanwhile, the Dean has given orders that the lid is to be put back on the well and the padlocks restored. But has the genie been put back in the bottle? I doubt it.
OCTOBER 5TH, 1938
This is the first time I have written in my journal for some days. I am recovering at Margate and my sister is with me. She takes me down to the front every day, puts me on a bench and tucks a plaid travelling rug around my knees, as if I were an elderly aunt with arthritis. I feel such a fool because there is really nothing wrong me, but every time I close my eyes they come. I can barely sleep, and when I do it is not long before I wake up screaming.
So I sit here watching the sea as it makes its slow gestures of advance and retreat upon the sand, like a sluggish invading army. Sometimes I fancy I see shapes forming themselves in the waves. I wait for them to resolve themselves into the monsters I once glimpsed, but mercifully they never do. One day beasts will come out of the waves, beasts of iron and steel, but not today.
I have just heard news of Bertie Winship. He had it worse than I did. He is in some sort of special Church of England nuthouse, but they tell me he makes a little progress. Bertie will recover, I feel sure of it, but he will never be the same Bertie he once was. Just as well, you may say, the perishing little pill! All the same, a part of me will regret the passing. By the end of it all we’ll none of us be the same.
I know now what I am going to do. I am going to resign my lectureship at Wessex and enlist in the South Morsetshire. Chaos is coming, rivers of blood will flow, and I feel it is better to be in the midst of chaos, than on the edge of it looking down into the black hole…
I must stop this.
It was St. Anselm himself who said: credo ut intelligam—“I believe so that I may understand”. I wish I did not believe. I wish to God I did not understand.
YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW
by ADRIAN COLE
DAWN HAD JUST started to edge the clouds behind the blocked silhouettes across the river, a white-grey mist. For a few moments the Manhattan skyline looked alien, like something Cyclopean, a hundred suns away. But the two men hardly registered the change in the light. Engrossed in their thoughts, they sat on a bench, focused on the shared inner dilemma that had occupied them throughout the night and previous evening.
The man wearing the distinctive blue of the NYPD, a sergeant, leaned back and yawned: he looked exhausted. Beside him, no less tired, the police detective watched the cold water thoughtfully. From the pocket of his raincoat he pulled a small audio tape, idly turning it over in his fingers. The other looked at it uneasily, hands shoved deep in his own pockets, as though a sudden chill breeze had ruffled him.
“So what’s the deal, Hal?” said the detective, though his eyes were still on the river. “You want to hear this again before I turn it over to the chief?”
The other considered a moment. “I guess we’ll all look pretty stupid. It’s not just the private dick that’ll sound like a fruitcake. Me most of all. I was the one who went in after him.”
“You think anyone will believe this stuff?”
“Do you, Ed? You’ve known me a long time. You think I’m cracking up?”
The detective shook his head. “Nah. If you say you saw something, then you saw it. But you’re certain? It was late, Hal. You were tired.
The light wasn’t good, that’s what they’ll say. It’s not the sort of thing people want to hear. You know?”
“Yeah, sure. Let me think about it.”
“Okay, but we don’t have much time. They’ll expect us back at the precinct pretty soon. One way or the other, we have to decide on our story.”
Again he flipped the tape recording.
As the dawn dragged itself skywards, they mentally went over the tape’s contents one last time.
Transcript of the interview recorded by Detective Sergeant Ed Mullins, NYPD. October 14th, 2002. In attendance, police sergeant Hal Vanner.
The voice is that of Mr. N. Stone, a private investigator.
In my line of business, you can’t afford to be picky. Some days, some months, you have to take the rough, as there’s no smooth. Putting it bluntly, these days there’s not a lot of smooth. Smooth is something I get from a whisky bottle. Okay, I draw the line at some stuff: I don’t do divorce cases, snooping on some sucker who’s screwing around, or some wife who’s looking for a new life away from her loaded husband. You can keep that kind of grime. Otherwise I’ll take on the more obscure stuff and brother, I’ve seen some bizarre things. There may be a Hell waiting in the afterlife, but I’ve been there already, more times than I care to mention.
I know a lot of the guys in this town call me Nick Nightmare, usually when I’m out of earshot. That’s about all you need to know about me. You’ll have a file on me. There’s always a file, right? Nick Stone, Private Eye, Public Fist. Tackles the cases other dicks won’t touch, kind of like that beer ad.
So anyway, you want to know about this case. Yeah, well, it’s pretty weird, I’ll give you that.
It started with a phone call. I was workin’ late the night before last, catchin’ up on some paperwork. I’d had a lean week, so I shut myself away to get on with it. I don’t have a secretary. They’d only go nuts tryin’ to work for me. Anyway, this phone call was from some guy who sounded like he was talkin’ through a hole in his throat. Maybe he was, given the kind of crap he was mixed up in.
Wanted me to find a man. Here in New York. Wouldn’t be easy, said the guy. The man he was after was an illegal immigrant, gone to ground. They had a few clues about where he might be, a trail.
I asked for some details, but gravel-voice didn’t want to stay on the phone. Maybe he thought my wire was tapped. It’s not, I promise you. I like my privacy and I have some good contacts for that kind of wire work.
The guy said, was I free now. This was 2:00 a.m. But it suited me. Especially when he told me how much he would pay. You don’t need to know that. So I said, come on over.
Less than an hour later they were knockin’ on the office door. Three of them. I know it’s October, but these guys were done up like they were headin’ for the Russian Front. I thought maybe they had at least three trench coats on, they were so god-dammed broad. And the slouched hats were classics. What little I saw of their faces were white. Not pale, but white. I’m not sayin’ they were zombies, but they did not look healthy. And they never showed their hands. Just kept them at their sides, deep down in their pockets. Shooters, I guessed. Why be different from everyone else in the neighborhood?
Only one of them spoke: the batteries on the other two must have run down. I guess he was the guy I’d spoken with on the phone. His voice was a gargle, foreign, maybe Eastern bloc, like he was full of runny cold. I know the light in my office was pretty poor, but his eyes were colourless. No emotion. Flat. Very cold fish.
He didn’t give me much to go on. The guy they were after, last calling himself Stefan Zeitsheim, had stepped off a boat out of Odessa that had arrived here in New York a few days ago. He had no papers, but had given everyone the slip. He was being hunted. So my job was to find him first.
I may not have the quickest brain this
side of the Atlantic, but I figured out pretty sharply that if these handsome guys were good buddies of Mr. Zeitsheim, he would have made a beeline for them once he’d slipped the ship. But obviously he was looking forward to meeting them with as much enthusiasm as a vampire would greet a priest. So he’d gone to ground. Lookin’ at them, I’d say Zeitsheim had his head screwed on.
“We don’t want to meet him,” gurgled my new employer. For the one and only time he took his hand out of his coat. Thick black glove, so no surprise there. He also had a thin black file, which he dropped on my desk. Taped to the front of it was a key. I recognized it: safety deposit box, Grand Central Station.
“Your pay. Half of it. The rest when the job is completed, Mr. Stone.” He shoved his hand back in his pocket, as if it had already been exposed to the air too long.
“So what do I do when I find him? Buy him lunch? Show him around the Big Apple?”
No hint of a smile. “It’s all in the file, Mr. Stone. You kill him.”
That was it, no frills. Just simply, you kill him.
“He is persona non grata. Find him quickly. No one need know.”
Yeah, except for whoever the hell else was hunting him. Like the law, or more likely the KGB, or whatever they call themselves these days.
“You have a suitable weapon?” growled the overcoat.
“If you mean a gun, yeah. Or is this a knife job? Or maybe a glass of something very strong?”
“We leave the means to you, Mr. Stone. But once you have killed him, and this is vital, you must incinerate him.”
There was what the poet once called a pregnant pause. Incinerate him?
“You would rather not accept this commission?”
Oh yeah, with these three monoliths looming over me, like I was going to refuse? I said not.
“Everything you need is in the file. We will contact you again, one week from now, at the same time. Be alone. Provided you have completed the task, the rest of the money will be in the same deposit box.”
* * *
I decided not to waste any time. My initial stop was Grand Central. The first helping of money was in the box all right. I could have moved out of town and set up on the West Coast right there and then, but I had this feeling that the three goons wouldn’t take too kindly to it. I read through the file. I have it safely tucked away. You guys are welcome to it when you want it. It’s not the snappiest read since Spillane. Just a few details about Stefan Zeitsheim, coupla mug shots so’s I’d know him. Looked like he’d spent a month or two in a jail, fed on bread and water once a week.
I grabbed a few hours’ sleep then decided to check out the docks. It was nearly 6:00 a.m. when I got there. Zeitsheim was supposed to have come in on one of the huge rust buckets, with some tongue-twisting Russian name. Easy enough to find the tub, but it would have been a needle-in-a-haystack job finding out from someone where he took off from. Yet already the quayside was crawling with unaccustomed life. Your boys in blue were out in force—maybe you know which ones?
I saw someone I knew over in the shadows of a warehouse. Never mind who: just a bum who tips me off from time to time. In a job like mine, you need eyes and ears everywhere. These guys are my lifeblood.
I eased over to him and slipped him a smoke. “So what’s the story?”
“Hi, Nick. Some guy left that big tub last night and walked straight into the next world. Cut himself up. No kiddin’. Real messy. Seems a long way to come to end it all.”
Suicide? That didn’t make any sense. “Don’t tell me. Name of Zeitsheim?”
“You knew him?”
“Of him. You?”
“All I know is, some of the boys got word there were some weird characters on the waterside. Expensive suits. You know, not regulars. Not the Mob either. They must have been waiting for the guy. He didn’t want to meet them, big time.”
I described the three uglies that had visited me.
“Nah. These were slick. More like FBI. But they weren’t quick enough to stop the Russkie toppin’ himself. See, over there.” He pointed to a group of shadows, men cleaning up the quayside. “Bled a river before they hauled his carcass out of here.”
“Who took him away?”
“Meat wagon. Down to the morgue. The slicks didn’t hang around. I guess they’ll be on the other side of the state by now.”
So my work was already done for me. Or it seemed like it. But this whole thing stank. Like my man had said, why come halfway across the world to cut yourself up?
“Get me any information you can on the suits. Where they went, who they spoke to,” I said and started for the local morgue. I needed to tie up some loose ends before I collected the second half of my takings.
* * *
No one takes too much interest in the comings and goings of a mortuary at 6:00 a.m., not unless something really big has gone down, so when I got there, it was quiet. Zeitsheim’s suicide would have been no great shakes here. I knew the guy on the desk, Raglo. I won’t say I’m a regular, but we’d played poker together a few times. He’s the worst poker player I know, but I let him win more than lose. That way I don’t always have to pry information out of him with a crowbar.
“Much happenin’?” I asked him.
“Quiet night, Nick. Three or four heart attacks, one drunk fished out the Hudson, brawl victim. Usual intake. What’s your angle?”
I flashed him a glimpse of Zeitsheim. “Fresh off the night boat from Odessa.”
He knew the case, of course, but his face clouded and he pulled back. “No, I don’t think so. You got the wrong morgue.”
“Don’t go cold on me, Raglo. He’s here.”
My man was sweating. “I don’t know nothin’.”
I smiled my horrible smile and leaned over the counter. “I know that. But tell me anyway.”
He knew what I was like when someone upset me. “Three guys came in, flashing badges at me.”
“Let me guess. FBI?”
He looked appalled. “You know about them?”
“A little. So what did they want, apart from a peek at Zeitsheim?”
He looked even worse, like he had acute guts ache. His face was like chalk. “They wanted more than that. They wanted his corpse. I mean, they wanted to take it away.”
I started sliding notes across the counter, lots of them.
“Listen, I saw the guy when we unzipped his bag and put him in the locker,” said Raglo, face even whiter.
“A mess, right?”
“You got that right. Nick. Used a long knife on himself. You know I ain’t squeamish, but this was about as bad as it gets. The guy was dead, right. You don’t get no deader. Think I don’t know a stiff when I seen one? Jimmy and me slid him home into a locker and turned the key.”
I straightened up. “So?”
“When I took the three suits back there and Jimmy unlocked it—jeeze, it was crazy. The smell was like nothin’ I ever smelled before. I tell ya, I’ve known every kind of horror in this place, Nick. Makes you thick-skinned and you can take anything, sights, smells, whatever. But this was one stench. Like a drain outta Hell itself.”
“The body?”
“Body? Shit, there was no body. Just a pool of… what the hell can I call it? Green slime. Yeah, slime. Inch deep in the locker.”
“You’re telling me that the body had decomposed that quickly? Turned into a pool of green slime in—what, minutes?”
He shook his head. “No. Weirder than that, pal. Jimmy spotted the rest of it. You want to see? Only you betta be quick. The dicks’ll be here in a minute.”
“Lead on.” I followed him out through the back into the cold room.
Jimmy, his attendant, was slumped at a desk, head down, snoring. We didn’t wake him. Sounded like he’d had enough for one night.
“This is the locker. But look, that’s what Jimmy noticed.” He pointed to the polished floor. Going across it was a kind of trail. I went over to look at it and bent down. Green slime was right. Like some big fat slug h
ad dragged itself across the room. I got up and walked through an open door to a small washroom out back.
“I haven’t touched anything,” avowed Raglo. “The Feds told me not to. They said they’d be back.”
I nodded. “I haven’t been here, okay? And you were right about the stink.” It made me cough. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, vile. But if you guys have been down there, you’ll know that.
Raglo pointed to the window. It was busted, like something far too bulky had been shoved through it, hard. More slime.
“Nick, what in hell is goin’ on? Who’s done this? Jimmy says no one could have got in here. No one could have gotten that body out of the locker without him knowin’.”
I shoved some more dollar notes into his shaking hand. “I guess you’re right. So we have to consider the other possibility. Well, you don’t, but I do.”
He gaped at me like a beached guppy.
“The guy was alive,” I said. “He crawled out. Where does the window lead to?”
* * *
I left him to it and none too soon. Minutes after I quit the morgue, a couple of police wagons drew up. At least I had a short head start on them.
Round the back of the building I found the alley system that was fed by the window from which Stefan Zeitsheim (or whatever had consumed him) had made his escape. I was beginning to see the attraction this guy had for his various pursuers. My current employers had told me that Stefan was hunted. No wonder. FBI? I had no contacts there. My guess was that they wanted him alive, while my employers wanted him dead. Maybe he had the dirt on them.
I picked up the slime trail, but it wound its way through a dozen alleys and petered out. After that there was nothing much to go on. So what was I looking for now? The mother of all maggots, or Houdini’s older brother? If this was a trick, a fake suicide and a weird escape to follow, it had taken some pulling off.
I went back to more familiar haunts and pored over what I knew so far with a pot of coffee and a fried breakfast at Fat Duke’s. Halfway through the bacon, a guy came in, noticed me in the corner and helped himself to the chair opposite me. I chewed slowly, waiting. This was no chance encounter. Another nice suit. The mountain had come to Mohammed.
Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth Page 11