Mists of the Miskatonic (Mist of the Miskatonic Book 1)

by Al Halsey

  “Maybe they had some type of revelation, some sign that changed their minds. Can a person who shoots their whole family then kills himself really be understood? Who can explain crazy?” The detective opened the door. Dry hinges creaked.

  The room was an office of sorts. An old battered desk with a tan laminated top sat in the corner: stacks of papers and books dominated the surface. A laptop computer was hooked to a printer. A stack of papers sat in the tray, and numerous dark photo albums were lined up against the wall.

  Several bookshelves stood against the walls, hundreds of books randomly stacked chaotically. A small window lit the room over the desk, and a single ray of the morning sun found its way through the smudged, dirty glass. Every wall had maps hung, and the charts had dozens of marks scribbled in ink. One large map of the world against the west wall had thumbtacks that secured scraps of paper covered with notes.

  The coroner followed behind. He looked over Kelsey’s shoulder. “I see three gun safes on the other side of the basement. If they’re full, could be as many as fifty guns total. And at least seven military metal ammo cans stacked on top. If they’re full of small caliber, could be forty or fifty thousand rounds.”

  “Quite a collector,” the detective smirked. “It’s Idaho. I’ve seen bigger.”

  Kelsey looked at the bookshelf. A collection of books about the end of times. A large one was prominently titled Empires of the Dead. He stared at the faded gold embossed on the spine. “What the hell is a matter with people? Who would read this crap?”

  “That confirms the end-of-the-world theory,” Mason said. “Got a little too into it, went over the deep end. This whole basement smells like the end of the world, living in this rat hole while Armageddon crashes down up above. Hidden here, eating freeze-dried noodles, waiting to resurface and recolonize. That’s a great plan.”

  Kelsey shuffled carefully through the papers on the desk: many were photocopies of pages of various books, and an article about a derelict ship at sea. Undecipherable foreign characters were on many of the pages. “Dammit. I can’t read a lot of this crap.”

  The detective opened a drawer and pulled out a shoebox. The box was heavy. Once opened, he could see wads of crumpled newspaper. “That’s about what the Gazette is good for.”

  He pulled out some of the paper to reveal a statue of some unrecognized greenish-black substance. It was heavy like stone, but slick. He pulled the eight-inch figure out of the box to the gasp of the Coroner. “What the hell is that thing?”

  The solid figure was vaguely humanoid, finely crafted, sitting on a block. Kelsey looked for a seam or cast marks, but could find none. In place of a head was a creature similar to an octopus with more tentacles than it should have on the face. The body was scaly, more pronounced than a snake’s skin would have. Huge claws protruded from hind and fore feet. Long, thin wings were attached. They stretched from the back, to the base of the crouching figure. The bend of the body vaguely reminded the detective of the famous statue ‘The Thinker’ in a satanic sort of way. It was possible that the monster leaned over to puke.

  The thing disturbed him deeply, and he stared into the greenish black eyes of the figure. Tiny flecks of shiny material caught the sunlight as he contemplated the demonic creature.

  On the base of the figurine was some type of hieroglyphics, a script unfamiliar to him.

  “God damn D & D crap,” the coroner grumbled. “That thing is creepy. No wonder he went crazy and shot his family, collecting this tripe.”

  Kelsey held up the statue. “It looks expensive. I doubt it’s a D & D figure. And it looks old.”

  Cautiously the Detective packed the creepy monster back into the shoebox and put it back into the drawer, much to his relief. There was something unnatural about it that he couldn’t put his finger on. He looked through the worn, faded photocopies: he recognized some notes with the name George Gammel Angell written on the top. It was the same script as the suicide letter upstairs.

  Kelsey scanned the copied words he made out ‘CTHULHU CULT’, ‘Narrative of Inspector John R. Legrasse,’ and 1925.

  “Well, let’s have all this stuff boxed up. I’d like to go through it some more. If this end of the world nonsense is going to kick into high gear, it seems like all the research is done and in one place for me,” Kelsey said. “Saves a lot of work.”

  “We agree that this is suicide then?” the coroner queried. “Seems pretty cut and dry to me.”

  The detective avoided the light from the window. Even though the thought of the sun on his face appealed, the bright light would have hurt his hung-over eyes. He wished his throbbing headache would stop.

  “I bet we find the ammo in one of those cans matches the rounds in the gun upstairs. Yeah, it’s pretty cut and dry,” Kelsey said quietly.

  After the sun went down, Kelsey retreated to the quiet basement of the Tapadera Motor Inn. It was the one bar in not crawling with college students, flush with loan money to blow. It was never too crowded, and the out-of-towners would not recognize him. He sat under a light and nursed an orange juice at the bar. It was the only place in the darkened establishment that he could read.

  “Another juice, hon?” the bartender asked, a cute blonde with a bright smile who always worked weekends. “Or something stronger?”

  He looked up from the papers spread out in front of him.

  “Let me think a second,” Kelsey said as he pondered and surveyed the bar. It had low ceilings and dark recesses. Kelsey was not as drunk as usual for a Saturday night. Behind the bartender were several rows of hard liquor bottles on a counter. She bent down and scooped ice out of a bin into a glass. There was an impressive flash of cleavage, but he looked away before he got caught. A large flat panel television was on VH-1 with the sound turned down, and Kelsey shifted on the marginally uncomfortable stool which squeaked. He smiled.

  “Not tonight, Shelly.”

  “I’ll call you the designated driver then. On the house,” she said and gave him a heavily made-up wink.

  “I appreciate it,” he said quietly as he considered the possibilities. He looked down at the folder of papers in front of him. He had taken the documents and a photo album from the desk of Rudy Samuels.

  The bartender paused, then looked at the papers from her side of the bar. “Working late? Something to do with that shooting in town today?”

  Kelsey felt his left eye twitch. “I can’t really talk about an ongoing investigation too much, but yeah. Just making sure all of our bases are covered, but it’s pretty cut and dry.”

  “Your little brother still in the Air Force? I haven’t seen him around for a while,” she said and smiled. She poured another orange juice and set it in front of him. “He’s a good kid.”

  “Navy. He’s in the Navy. Carrier Strike Group Five, based in Japan. He’s on the George Washington; it’s an aircraft carrier. He called a couple days ago. Getting underway again, out to sea within the week.” When he thought of his younger brother, Robert, it made him sad. Deployments went on forever. Then he focused on the papers in front of him.

  The bartender wandered off to check other patrons and he opened the photo album. Most of the pictures were old. All were places appeared long forgotten: dark woods, vine-covered ruins, ancient cracked statuary that were destroyed by the forces of weather and time. One of the pictures was older than the rest, a black-and-white photo of a giant statue.

  The stone monolith in the photo was eight or nine feet tall, based on a police officer in the picture. The cop had a short buzz cut and held his hat and service revolver. The large statue looked very similar to the greenish figurine he had held earlier in the day.

  Kelsey pulled the picture from the album and turned it over. In old ink from a fountain pen, he read the words written on the back of the photo. “Cthulhu Idol, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1907”. Under it, in that now-familiar script of the dead man was scrawled, “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

  Another black-and-white p
hoto showed ancient stone blocks, many tumbled and moss-covered ruins with the same policeman. On the back were notes written by Rudy Samuels: “Unidentified ruins, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1907.” Then in Rudy’s writing: “Inspector John Raymond Legrasse.” For several minutes he laid them side by side and just stared. He thought about the eyes of the man frozen in time. Eyes, captured a century ago looked back from the picture.

  “What did you know, Inspector?” Kelsey whispered to the photo. “What is this thing?” He opened the folder of papers and flipped through them slowly until he found a photocopy of an arrest report dated November 1, 1907. The report had been prepared and typed by the inspector: the original page count was seven. In this stack of papers, the detective only had the first two: a cover page (1 of 7) that listed the names of twenty police officers. Legrasse and others had responded to a complaint about ‘voodoo rituals’ and ‘naked dancing.’ The second page (2 of 7) had a list of foreign names. They were impossible to pronounce or to divine their ethnic origin. He squinted and tried to make sense of the possible pronunciations, and then he looked to see a list of dispositions. The top forty-seven names had the word ‘arrested’ penned besides the typed list, two more with the words ‘wounded’ and five more with ‘deceased’.

  He quickly flipped through the rest of the folder. Kelsey hoped for more of the report, but could not find it. He noticed Shelly observing him. She smiled, and then leaned close. “So whatcha working on now?”

  Kelsey shuffled papers, then glanced at part of a journal entry about a captured yacht that arrived upon the ruins of a city named R’lyeh. The photocopy was dark and the handwritten words were hard to decipher as he skimmed, but he learned that the crew found a stone pillar sticking from the sea and investigated. Some of the words were too obscured, but others were readable. He deciphered the phrases greenish stone blocks, Babylon of elder Deamons, and squid-like bas relief. Before he answered the bartender, he made out the words Great Cthulhu.

  “Some of this is hard to read. Going to have to really work at it.” The detective looked around the quiet bar, then back at the papers. “I think this guy who shot up his family was into the end-of-the-world thing.”

  “That’s what people are saying,” Shelly said. “I saw that movie. With John Bonham? 2012. Where they built the big ships and the governments hid it.”

  “John Cusack. John Bonham was the drummer for AC/DC. You’re thinking of John Cusack. Bonham is dead. Cusack’s career practically is, too.” He smiled up at her.

  “I’m more of a country girl myself,” she smiled back. “Bosephus gal, that’s me.”

  “You couldn’t believe how many of these crazy end-of-the-world theories there are. Some of them come from the Mayan calendar, the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. Some are based on the change of the magnetic poles coming soon: other theories that the star Betelgeuse will supernova, solar flares every twelve thousand years, you name it. This Cthulhu thing is a wild one, and I can’t find much about it.” Kelsey tipped the glass back and emptied it. “I have read so much about the end of the world in the last few hours it’s depressing.”

  A young man in a pressed white shirt and thin black tie hurried into the room. He whispered furtively in Shelly’s ear. Wide-eyed, she fumbled for a silver remote under the counter and pointed it at the television. The screen flickered as she passed several channels to stop on the news. She turned up the volume.

  A somber anchorman read from notes on his desk. “To recap, an earthquake has hit near New Zealand. The U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado, has estimated that the quake measured over nine point one. It was centered on the ocean floor, south of the islands. Serious damage is being reported from Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Tauranga. Contact has been lost from widespread power outages and infrastructure damage. Aftershocks continue to rock the islands. A tsunami warning has been issued for New Zealand, as well as the west coast of Mexico and California.”

  Shelly put the remote on the bar. “My sister and her kids are in Newport, Oregon. I gotta call them. She’s probably asleep.”

  Kelsey watched the television alone for a few more minutes. Tsunami warnings were issued for all of the Pacific Rim.

  He turned back to the photos. The whole album consisted of pictures of places from all over the globe, ancient walls and plinths of primitive horrors and vine covered faces. One picture on the last page of the book stood out, a large mound in a color photograph. He pulled it from the book and stared at it, then turned it over. “Heart of the Monster, Kamiah, Idaho” in the dead man’s writing.

  He looked at the television again and pondered how many times over the years he drove past the mound on the way to Montana. Then he thought about the large map that had been on the wall of the study. Landmarks all over the United States.

  Shelly talked on a cell phone in the corner. She waved as Kelsey gathered the papers and shoved them back into the tan folder. He set a five-dollar bill on the bar and left quietly.

  Sunday morning came, overcast and cold with a brisk wind that blew from the west. Kelsey measured two scoops of coffee, started the pot and then sat in front of the television in his house. The living room was mostly bare: his ex-wife took most of the furniture in the divorce. Even the dog went with her. His dog. At least he kept the cat. Now the house was quiet: more than a little cold and dreary.

  Last night, he had slept fitfully, dreams not quite congruent. Massive blocks of ancient stone, crumbled mesas that hid hidden passages filled his night. The detective chalked it up to too much television and too many pictures of prehistoric ruins.

  He sat in the one easy chair left behind and watched the tiny television that sat on the floor. All the channels were filled with images of the tsunamis that followed the previous night’s earthquakes. There was massive damage in Thailand, Malaysia and along the coasts of New Zealand.

  When the coffee was finished, he sipped the hot liquid and thumbed through the papers in the folder. Several pages were in an unreadable language, old photocopies of what appeared to be a Latin manuscript. On the corner of one of the pages was scribbled in smudged pencil: “Copied Miskatonic U”. On the back, one passage was circled then an apparent translation penciled underneath. “That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange eons death may die.”

  “Whatever the hell that means, you freak,” Kelsey grumbled and rubbed at his temples. This whole thing was just a little much. He finished the last of the strong coffee, showered, and returned to the police station.

  He chatted up the dispatchers for a while, thankful for some female interaction that did not result in screams. Then he spent an hour rummaging through the boxes of materials taken from the office in the Samuels’ house. The detective specifically looked for things written in English. Kelsey found the large map that had been rolled up after being taken from the wall in the study.

  He carted three boxes culled from the sixteen confiscated, then headed back to his empty place and spent the rest of the day reading about doomsday.

  Monday morning arrived after another night was filled with fitful sleep and bad dreams. It took three taps of the alarm, but he forced himself out of bed, stumbled to the bathroom and squinted while shaving under harsh fluorescent lights. In the shower, Kelsey leaned his head against wall. The hot water washed over him while he breathed in the steam. After a rinse that would have pissed off anyone eco-conscious at the blatant wastefulness, he cracked the bathroom window for ventilation and got ready for work.

  After a quick stop to get a Grande Double Mocha at an espresso stand and a quick drive, he wound his way through Monday traffic. Kelsey parked his car in the back lot of the station, and punched the security code before he entered.

  He sat in his cubicle and groaned when the phone indicated eighteen messages. Pen in hand, he scribbled and deleted the deluge of queries about the weekend’s events. Several of the messages were silence, a bit of static until the line clicked and the system r
ealized the caller had hung up. Kelsey cussed quietly, and looked at the display on the phone that said ‘UNIDENTIFIED NUMBER’. The eighteenth message was an unfamiliar voice.

  “Detective,” the shaky voice cracked. “This is Phil Dreyfus, Dr. Phil Dreyfus. I did some marriage counseling, some individual stuff with Rudy Samuels. I…” the voice trailed off and cracked. “I can’t believe he did this. He’s been talking. Has a lot of articles, books. I mean…it is still very upsetting.”

  “Well, believe it, doc,” Kelsey whispered as he jotted down notes. “Fine shrink you turned out be. No deposit, no returns. No refunds.”

  “Rudy had some troubling visions. Dreams. He thought he had put a puzzle together. It seemed so outlandish, so fanciful at first. And the puzzle was falling into place. Delusional, paranoid. I don’t know. But it seems like it’s coming together now. I can’t believe it.”

  Kelsey looked at the telephone. The message was left late Saturday night. “What comes together, doc?” he said quietly. “What do you know about my shooter?”

  “I want to talk to you. Call me on Monday, Detective. I need…want to talk to you, so call Monday. My secretary will get a message to me.”

  “Sure as hell I wanna talk to you, doc,” the detective whispered before he saved the message. “I want to know what you know.”

  The break room of the Lewiston Police Department was in the basement. Wood panels covered most of the walls and a large table dominated the center of the area. A counter on the north wall held several coffee pots, each one marked smartly with a sticker whether it was decaf or not. Any baked goods, store-bought or from home, were placed on the counter. A stack of napkins left over from an old Christmas party was beside the treats. Today, someone had brought in several dozen cookies from the day-old section of the local store. A half-empty box of donuts was left from Sunday.

  Kelsey spread out the contents of the boxes taken from the Samuels’. He sat at the end of the table, shuffled through papers and glanced at the weird, green figurine he put in front of him. Its carved eyes seem to follow him, inanimate and inhuman. Something about the statue disturbed him. Last night’s nightmares were just beyond recall, but the figure seemed like part of them. He wished he could remember more.