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

by Al Halsey

  “A possible reality, in the future,” she repeated. “Not all of them will come to pass.”

  “We have never seen anything that would indicate ruins or indigenous life on Mars,” the FBI agent scoffed. “Pretty far out stuff.”

  “I don’t ever remember the story indicating the Mi-Go is indigenous to Mars,” she retorted.

  Agent Marsh laid the crystal on the table he had held. “Your crystal. Take it and show us.”

  Jaelle took the crystal in her hand and reached out to Agent Walden. He smirked and held out his hand, and she grasped it. She concentrated and clasped the crystal tightly.

  “I see a young boy. A house on a quiet cul-de-sac in a small town. Hot summers. I see cactus and yucca. It’s dusty. Dry. I see Arizona? No. New Mexico. Right on the border. There is an arroyo, filled with brackish water. It is turgid, warm, and winds through a neighborhood. A fence, but the gate hangs loose, off its hinges. The young boy and his older brother ignore the warning signs, and swim in the warm waters. The young boy dives and hits his head on a motorbike submerged in the arroyo. The bike was stolen and abandoned in the canal. I feel a pain in my neck, intense. I heard the bones crack, feel my legs and arms go numb. The water is heavy, it burns in my lungs. He broke his neck. His older brother cannot find him in the muddy water, he searches fruitlessly. His parents blame him for the death…”

  Walden pulled his hand away and stood. “Ok, that’s enough. I’ve heard enough.”

  Marsh looked on. “Is there a problem, Agent?”

  “She just had some lucky guesses, that’s all. I don’t believe in your gifts, Ms. Mircea. You may read people well, but that’s it. Excuse me.” The FBI agent slowly backed out of the room as he glowered at the gypsy. “A stopped clock is right twice a day.”

  “Interesting,” Marsh said. “A reaction I did not expect.”

  “It would be tough to carry the burden through life. That you feel responsible for killing your own brother,” she said, sadly. “It was not his fault, but he has never come to grips with it. It was just a freak accident.”

  Marsh pulled another notebook from the stack. “This story interested me. Partly because you didn’t finish it, but partly because it intersects with your own history. I assume, somewhere in one of the boxes from your house is the second part of this.”

  “That would be correct,” Jaelle said.

  “Well, let me ask about this one,” the unblinking Homeland Security Agent said stoically. He opened the notebook and read the title. “Sturmbannführer. That’s German.”

  “Yes. It means Major,” Jaelle said. “Military rank.”

  Marsh closed the notebook, and then sighed. “You watch Indiana Jones movies a lot, Jaelle? What does Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn mean? What language is that?”

  “I don’t know the language. It means in his house at R’lyeh dead, Cthulhu waits dreaming. The god of the statue. And these are the visions of what was, or what could have been. I am not always privy to the flow of history, if the vision is actually accurate. What I wrote was accurate, in that time line,” she said. “I don’t interpret my dreams. I just document what I see and how the parts were played. It’s also possible events transpire as I dreamed, but we are just not aware of them.”

  “An interesting conundrum, given your own family history in the extermination camps,” Marsh said, his eyes transfixed. He set another notebook on the table. “It makes me wonder if these dreams are predicated on your own subconscious issues. The loss of your grandfather, maybe? I have the sequel in the stack. We need to read it. See who in Germany ends up with your statue.”

  “You will believe what you will, Mr. Marsh.” She shifted in her seat. “Read whatever you want. My answers stay the same.”

  Agent Marsh reached for the crystal on the table. He accidently brushed her hand and she recoiled quickly. Her mind was flooded with images, and she felt doom, submerged under icy water. In the back of her mind the ocean roared.

  “You…no,” she whispered as she backed away from the table. “You have it. The look.”

  He smirked. “I don’t have the foggiest idea what you are talking about. What is the look?”

  “The Innsmouth look. You know more than you let on,” she murmured. Her body was numb, her brain drowned in visions of frigid oceans. “You are one of them. I know what you are.”

  “I am from Innsmouth, Massachusetts. But what do you mean the look? I don’t understand. Are you all right, Miss Mircea?”

  Jaelle began to scream hysterically until a man entered with a syringe and ended it.

  Walden walked through the white corridors of the West Seattle Psychiatric Hospital. It looked and smelled hospital clean. The odor of industrial disinfectant permeated his nostrils. Overhead the air conditioner hummed, the faint sound carried through vents. Somewhere distant music echoed, faintly through the hallways. Ahead of him was a desk, his destination: the nurses’ station.

  The station was a half circle, topped with industrial white linoleum counters. Two nurses with nametags sat quietly. One was an attractive, blond haired woman, the other a young man with dark, close cut hair. They flipped charts and scribbled notes. The FBI Agent pulled out his wallet and showed his credentials.

  “Your patient, Jaelle Mircea is in our custody. How is she doing?”

  The two nurses looked at each other. The female nurse fumbled with a folder that sat in front of her. “She is on a lot of medications right now, Mister Walden,” the male nurse said.

  “Can she answer questions?” he asked.

  “She is pretty out of it. Communicative, but a lot of it is ranting. A lot of complaining about no Diet Coke. Good luck if you want to speak with her.” The nurse took a drink from a mug, and then sat it down. The Agent could smell coffee.

  “What kind of medications?” Walden asked.

  The female nurse looked at the file, and then read from the chart. “200 milligrams of Clozapine, twice a day. That is an anti-psychotic. 150 milligrams of Burpropion HCL XL twice a day. That is an anti-depressant. Also Trazadone, 150 milligrams at bedtime to help for sleep, Xanex .5 milligrams three times a day for anxiety, and Lamotrigine 100 milligrams daily as an anticonvulsant to help counter the side effects of the antipsychotics.”

  “That’s a lot of meds,” Walden said emotionlessly. “Is that normal?”

  “Pretty standard load for schizophrenia, anxiety and depression. Maybe a bit heavy, but she is out there,” the nurse said. She then shut the file. “I don’t think questioning her will do any good. She’s talking pretty crazy. Ranting at times. Visual and auditory hallucinations.”

  “Thank you for the information,” he said. Walden walked down another sterile corridor, detoured to the soda machine, then up some stairs. Another hallway on the second floor led to where two Seattle Police officers waited outside a door. He showed his credentials and they allowed him to pass.

  The small room was bare, carpeted in low institutional blue. The walls were plain white trimmed with a light blue. A thin, horizontal window of double-paned safety glass allowed a view of gray clouds. A small, nondescript laminated nightstand sat beside a hospital bed. On the nightstand was a covered plastic cup with a straw, filled with a clear liquid. A simple chair sat near the door. Jaelle’s right wrist was cuffed to the bed.

  She stared out the sliver of a window at the sky. Her eyes were vacant, her face emotionless. Her dark hair was disheveled, her lack of makeup noticeable. Around her wrist was a bracelet that identified her to the hospital staff.

  “Good afternoon, Jaelle. I apologize for leaving our interview so suddenly yesterday. It was very rude of me to walk out like that,” Walden said quietly, then set a Diet Coke on the table. “I came by to see if you needed anything. We got off on what felt like the wrong foot. I just want information, to know more about your visions. Your writings.”

  She laughed and sobbed at the same time, an odd outburst. “My life was fine until Homeland Security decided my writings were sedi
tious. Decided that my dreams were a threat to the future of the country. I had a successful business, clients, and a tidy little home. Who knows what I will return to?”

  The Agent pulled the chair close to the bed. Jaelle tried to reach across to get the soda. She couldn’t get to it. He opened it, handed it to her and she drank it dry. She cradled the empty can and stared at it.

  “Is this good cop, bad cop?” the Fortune Teller asked. “If it is, it’s pretty obvious.”

  “Nope. We just want to clear this as quickly as we can. Homeland Security is pretty paranoid after the last couple of years. Boston, Benghazi, and Iraq. No one wants any more mistakes or the appearance of cover-ups,” he said. “This is about a bureaucratic backlog.”

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” she whispered. “Sometimes the visions come so fast that I don’t think about what I am saying. I’m sorry I upset you.”

  “It was unprofessional of me to get upset like that. Normally, I wouldn’t admit that. But this investigation has taken some odd twists and turns. I believe that you have a gift.” Walden looked out the window at the gray clouds above. A prophecy of rain: an easy divination to make in Seattle. “It’s something I thought was dealt with a long time ago. It wasn’t my fault that motorcycle was in the irrigation ditch. But, I was the big brother. It was my job to protect him. I didn’t do my job. In a way, this job now is a lot like being a brother. To protect those who are innocent.”

  “Sometimes, no matter what we do, bad things happen. The world does these things to us. We can hide, but still they follow us. It is the nature of this world,” she said. “A lot of decisions were made that put that motorcycle in the water. That one decision, to put it there, cost your brother dearly.”

  “There were a lot of other decisions that put us there, also,” he said, quietly. “Including ignoring the sign.”

  “So have you decided to let me go?” she said, and rattled the handcuffs. “You don’t have to be a fortune-teller to know this will not end well for me.”

  “You have not been charged with anything. Homeland Security is calling the shots. Just cooperate with them and this will be over soon enough. Your writing has really piqued their interest, that’s for sure, Jaelle. Just cooperate. Move on with your life. If you have nothing to hide, then Marsh and his superiors have nothing to charge you with. Their hands are so full, they want to clear you to free up the manpower,” the Agent said. “How many people have seen your writings?”

  “Not many. Marsh isn’t afraid of treason, or sedition like he says,” she murmured. “He is afraid of people seeing the unseen. Of people waking to a cruel reality.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “What is unseen?”

  “What he really is. What he and his…people really want.”

  “All right,” Walden said. “What are you hiding? What do you know?”

  “I accidently touched Marsh. I didn’t understand what I sensed. My mind was flooded with all these images. Water. Seascapes. Ocean life. A huge city of cold stone under the waves, deep on the sea floor. Then I could see a dreary little town, all though I didn’t know the name. And something else. Men. But not men. They walked upright, walked among other men who didn’t understand what they were, like I didn’t understand what he was. Then they shed their skins and took to the water. They live in the ocean. They are not human.”

  Walden breathed deep, then shifted in his chair. “So. Like some kind of mermen, or aliens? Some kind of body snatchers?”

  Her body started to shake. “That would make this easy, wouldn’t it? Easy to write me off as crazy, conspiracy theories about underwater aliens,” she cried. “It would explain the drugs, and the psychiatrist saying I’m schizophrenic and delusional. I’m not.”

  “Then tell me your dream. Tell me your vision of reality.”

  “Innsmouth, Massachusetts. A little fishing hamlet not from Arkham. Their blood is corrupted, foul, and evil. Your partner from Homeland Security, Mister Eugene Marsh, isn’t human. He is the great-great grandson of a man named Captain Obed Marsh. I saw it in my vision. They look human until it’s time to shed their skins and take their final form,” she whispered. She reached out with a shaky hand to set the empty can on the table, but dropped it. Walden caught the can and set it on the table. “You can see it in his eyes.”

  “So they shed their skins, then what?” he asked, incredulously. “What about his eyes?”

  “I saw them in my vision, like a cross between a fish and a toad, walking about upright. Their skin color is gray and green, with bellies the color of a corpse. I can see claws on webbed hands, scales, and those eyes. Those unblinking, cold eyes that stare and bulge. Gills that pulsate to some hellish drummer as they suck in air. In my vision I was on a beach, the frigid waves of the Atlantic lapped uncaringly at my feet. Behind me was a rotten, dilapidated town with boarded windows. Someone whispered a word I didn’t understand when I first heard it. Y’ha-nthlei. After I heard it a few times I understood what it meant.” Her whole body shook while she related the story. “Deep under the waves, off of the coast is a city. An underwater city, carved in stone and coral. Columns hold up ceilings of rock, mined from the depths of the ocean. A thousand terraces are planted with coral, lit with a hellish glow. Strands of bloated kelp undulate to some undetectable rhythm, and oddly deformed fish school in archways. That’s where they live, if that is what you can call it.”

  “Where the mermaids live?” he asked. “Seems like the government would know that an underwater city lay off of the coast of Massachusetts.”

  “Not mermaids. The Deep Ones. They have dwelled under the waves before man walked the earth. Now they demand human sacrifice, and they mate…they mate with us. Sometimes it’s rape, sometimes someone evil enough will trade themselves to the things. Money, power, forbidden knowledge. People have a price, Agent Walden. All people have a price. When these hybrid creatures start life, they look like a human, but then like a demonic moth they emerge from their humanity. They shed their skins and take to the sea. They are immortal then, only killed by violence. Have no doubt the government is aware of their presence. When they realized it was there in 1927, the Navy fired dozens of torpedoes and dropped masses of depth charges. Y’ha-nthlei is a mile and a half deep. The pressures crush everything at that depth. The torpedoes did not even come close.”

  “That is quite a story. Your vision is very complete,” Walden said. “But now we have the technology to explore even deeper.”

  “They have a new strategy now. They have infiltrated our government at the highest levels. They have nothing to fear.” She pulled at the handcuff, and the bed lurched. “Nothing to fear! Eugene is one of them!”

  “So you’re saying that these…Deep Ones…in their larval hybrid forms...have infiltrated our government?” he said incredulously.

  “His eyes!” Jaelle screamed. “Look at his eyes. It’s the look. The Innsmouth look, they call it. He doesn’t blink. Before he sheds his skin, before he takes to the water. His eyes! His eyes! His eyes!”

  “Please Jaelle, calm down,” he said and stood.

  The whole bed shook and she flailed. The Fortune Teller was wild as she screamed. She clumsily swung at the Agent. Saliva dribbled as she tried to spit, unsuccessfully. Blood began to run down her arm from where the handcuff cut into her flesh.

  “Dagon! Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn! Iä-R’lyeh! Cthulhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä!” she screamed.

  The door opened and the nurses from the desk entered with the two police officers. The female nurse drew a clear liquid from a tiny glass vial into a syringe.

  “I need her held down, now!” the nurse ordered. The three men grabbed at Jaelle as she fought. She clawed with her free hand, and scratched the male nurse on the hand. “Agent Walden, you need to leave!”

  “She became agitated during our conversation,” he said, then took two steps backwards. “What’s in the syringe?”

  “We see that,” t
he nurse shouted. “Haloperidol Lactate, five milligrams. It will calm her down. I need to get to her leg.”

  Jaelle continued to scream as the officers and nurse pinned her, and then the injection was administered. Namir cautiously left the room. The door slowly shut and latched behind him, her shrieks still audible through the solid wood door. He breathed deep and realized his hands were shaking.

  “Agent Marsh will see you now,” the perky blonde receptionist said. Namir stood, and then carefully moved to the door. This was the first time he had been at the Homeland Security offices off of Tukwila International Blvd. He knocked, and then pulled the door open.

  The office was tiny. A small, tinted window looked out over office buildings surrounded by trees and parking lots. A neatly organized, dark wood topped desk dominated the middle of the room. Framed pictures of President Barack Obama and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson were on the wall. In a black, leather office chair sat Agent Eugene Marsh.

  “Welcome, Agent Walden. To what do I owe this surprise visit?” Marsh asked.

  “Just following up on the Mircea case. I visited her in the hospital this morning. She became very agitated during questioning, and is heavily medicated. It required the staff to give her something to calm her down. I just thought you should know.”

  “I am already aware of the situation with her,” Marsh said, staring. “I would prefer you not question her anymore until we finish collecting evidence and review her written materials.”

  “She has created quite a mythology, and it involves you, now,” Walden said. “It involves a fantastic tale of government conspiracies, evil mermaids and fish men. She says you not blinking is evidence.”

  Agent Marsh laughed: a deep throated gurgle more than a chortle. “Hypomimia. Unblinking eyes. In Innsmouth, where I was born, it’s not an unusual condition. Some people even call it the Innsmouth look. Back in the day, it was brought there by some of the crew of my great-great grandfather’s ship. In the area of Massachusetts it’s common knowledge. I suppose some superstitious yokels will always stir things up, see things that are not there. Spin wild yarns to explain it. Even ones of froggy-fish men. You find Hypomimia all over, of course, but it is a genetic cluster that is prevalent in my hometown. Lucky guess on the fortune teller’s part, I suppose.”