Ghouls of the Miskatonic (The Dark Waters Trilogy) (2 page)

“Was it that underwater city again?”

“I don’t remember much about this one,” said Amanda, unwilling to speak of the blasphemous undersea vision just yet. “I don’t always remember the dreams. I just know that they’re bad.”

Amanda turned on the cold tap and splashed water onto her face, feeling the deep cold of the dark ocean once more. Despite that, the water helped and she ran her wet hands through her hair. She tried looking in the mirror to see how she looked, but without her glasses all she saw was a pale pink blob topped by a damp mop of blond hair.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Coming up on seven.”

“Are you going for a run?”

“Yeah, you think I get up this early like this for fun?” said Rita. “You want to come?”

“No thanks,” said Amanda. “I don’t think I’m up for a run just yet. I need to get on with that paper for Professor Grayson. It’s late and he’s already given me one extension. I don’t think he’ll give me another.”

“Grayson? Why you bothering with that? It ain’t like it’s your major. It’s anthropology and history for heaven’s sake.”

“It’s extra credit,” said Amanda. “And I like his classes. Just because I’m an engineering student doesn’t mean I’m all numbers and calculations.”

“Yeah, don’t I know it,” said Rita with a smile. “I’ve seen you writing poetry when you think I ain’t looking. Crescent City girls are plenty things, but stupid ain’t one of ‘em.”

Amanda tried to hide her embarrassment, but Rita didn’t care. That was what Amanda loved about her roommate. Rita had been through so much in her own life that she would never dream of giving anyone else a hard time about having secret ambitions of their own.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” said Amanda, feeling more like herself.

“Done, I got five miles to go before first class.”

“What do you have?”

“Fluid dynamics. You?”

Amanda rolled her eyes. “Materials at eleven, then I’ve got a shift at the bank in the afternoon.”

“How many is that this week?”

“Four,” said Amanda, “and I know what you’re going to say. No wonder I’m late with Professor Grayson’s paper if I’m working all the time.”

“I didn’t say nothing,” said Rita. Amanda could see she was itching to get outside into the fresh air and stretch her long limbs on a punishing run. She turned Rita around and pushed her toward the stairs.

“Go. Run,” she said. “At least one of us should be getting some exercise today.”

“You going to be okay?” said Rita, already down the first two steps.

“I’ll be fine. Go!”

“I’m going!” cried Rita, out of sight now beyond the balustrade. As Amanda turned back toward her room, Rita’s voice drifted up from the hall below.

“Don’t think this gets you out of coming to the Commercial with me over the weekend. Marie Lambeau and Jim Culver are coming to town, and that joint’s gonna be swingin’ girl. We gonna dance till the sun come up, you hear me?”

“I hear you,” said Amanda, running over to the banister. “Me and the rest of the dorm.”

Rita waved up at her laughing and ran outside.

* * *

The building loomed above him as only structures built to house the mentally afflicted could, the central tower with its steepled roof seeming to look down upon him as a stern father might a truculent child. Whenever Oliver Grayson came to Arkham Asylum, he always felt as though the barred windows and iron fencing sought to enclose him so completely that he might never be able to leave.

He smiled for the attendant at the gatehouse and drove his battered Ford Model A up the gravel roadway toward the main entrance. The engine coughed and lurched, reminding him that he needed to have Abel Sykes take a look at it. Oliver turned the car around and parked his vehicle by the foot of the steps leading up to the asylum’s entrance.

The central block of the asylum was built of red brick and was double roofed, with a Venetian-styled tower at its center. A wing extended from each side of the central block, housing the asylum’s lunatic inmates and its many treatment rooms. All the windows were secured with stout iron bars bolted to the brickwork, and the walls were thick with cyanotic vines.

Stepping out of the car, he buttoned his coat tight. September was coming to an end, and a stiff Massachusetts wind was blowing down from the hills to the west. Oliver pulled his trilby down tight onto his head so that only the merest suggestion of his neatly trimmed brown hair emerged from beneath the rim. He lifted a leather briefcase from the backseat of his car and walked across the gravel toward the heavy oak and steel reinforced door that led within.

With one hand thrust deep into his coat pocket, his head down and a purposeful walk, he imagined himself looking like Dr. Thorndyke from
The Blue Scarab
, but knew that was his imagination getting the better of him. Thorndyke was tall, athletic, and handsome, whereas Oliver knew he was no more than average height, bookish, and gangling, with thin features that more than one student had described as bird-like.

He climbed the steps to the main door and rang the electric bell, hearing it clanging within like the bells of St. Michael’s calling the faithful to worship. As always, he felt the first stirrings of unease, for there was often the feeling that the orderlies and doctors who worked here were looking at him as though measuring him for a straitjacket. That was, of course, ludicrous. Such barbaric restraints were almost never utilized any more, a more pharmaceutical route being the preferred method of ensuring patient compliance.

The door opened and a thickset orderly Oliver hadn’t seen before looked him up and down. The man stood in the doorway and waited for him to speak.

“Ah, yes, Oliver Grayson for Henry Cartwright. I telephoned Dr. Hardstrom to tell him I was coming. I’m a bit early, obviously, but you know how it is: classes to teach at the university, eager young minds to fill with knowledge…”

The words trailed off as he saw the orderly wasn’t the slightest bit interested. Why would he be? Oliver had a tendency to gabble when nervous, and the asylum made him more nervous than almost any other place in Arkham, and that was saying something. The orderly waved him in and Oliver removed his hat and stepped into the dimly lit atrium. The floor was a staggered herringbone pattern of black and white tiles that formed a serrated arrow pointing toward an iron gate barring access to the inner sanctum of the institution. Even the architecture of this place drew him in, letting him know that it had a padded room ready and waiting for the day his mind collapsed.

A small reception desk was set to one side and the orderly went behind this and checked his name against the day’s expected visitors.

“Grayson?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re here to see who?”

“Professor Henry Cartwright,” said Oliver. “I believe I said that already.”

The orderly gave him an odd look and shook his head. “Nobody by that name works here.”

“No,” said Oliver with a forced smile. “He doesn’t work here. He is a patient here.”

“Right,” said the orderly. “Then he’s not a professor. You shouldn’t confuse things by saying things that aren’t true.”

Oliver wanted to say that Professor Henry Cartwright deserved the title of professor more than most men who bore it, lunatic or not, but sensed that getting into an argument with this orderly would see him shown the door in short order.

A heavy visitor’s book was turned around to face Oliver.

“You need to sign in,” said the orderly, as though Oliver had never been here before.

Oliver took out his fountain pen and dipped it into the desk’s recessed inkwell, signing his name and taking his pocket watch out to write down the time. It was a quarter past seven, early by any academic’s standards, but Henry always seemed more cogent in the early hours of the day. Medicated he was barely coherent, and by evening virtually catatonic.

The rattle of iron keys and the clatter of a lock announced the arrival of another orderly. Oliver looked up from the book to see a thin-faced man coming through the barred gateway. His name was Monroe, and he was smoking a cheap roll-up cigarette that reeked unpleasantly of damp moss.

The thickset orderly jabbed a callused thumb toward Oliver.

“Take him upstairs,” said the orderly. “He’s here to see the firebug.”

* * *

“Henry?” he said. “Henry? It’s Oliver Grayson. Thought I’d stop by and see how you were getting on. Been awhile, I know, but you know how it is at the university. Always classes to take, papers to grade and so on.”

Henry Cartwright didn’t respond, sitting on the edge of his bed with his hands clasped in his lap and staring vacantly at the blank wall opposite him. Oliver removed his coat and put it on the back of the chair Monroe had provided. He set down his briefcase and sat beside Henry, looking at the man’s pale, ravaged features. He’d lost weight since coming to the asylum, almost three years ago, but that was only to be expected. The burn scarring on his hands and face had healed well, and only the barest hint of it could be seen at the side of his neck and upon his palms.

Some of the other patients had access to sketch pads, paints, and colored crayons, with which they decorated their rooms with drawings and symbols analyzed by the institute’s physicians. Not that much came of such analysis, for though Arkham Asylum practiced modern psychiatric treatments, the emphasis was very much on palliative care and not curing its patients. Henry had no such adornments to his room. Since he had been incarcerated at the asylum after a series of arson attacks in late 1923, it had been deemed ill-advised to give Henry anything flammable in his room.

“Are they treating you well?” he asked. “Is the food tolerable?”

Again there was no answer, though Henry turned his head slightly.

“I expect you’ll be glad of the coming winter,” continued Oliver. “Less light to wake you in the mornings.”

As well as no paper, Henry’s room had no curtains either, and in summer the light streamed in criminally early. Oliver himself was a light sleeper, and hung blackout curtains on the windows of his bedroom at the first hint of spring. He unsnapped his briefcase and lifted out a book,
The Great Gatsby
, and opened it to where he’d reached the last time he’d come to see Henry. After catching the movie at the Amherst Theatre, Oliver had picked up the book from the university library and found it far superior to the celluloid adaptation.

“Now where were we?” said Oliver. “Ah, yes. Nick had just learned that his neighbor is the millionaire Jay Gatsby, and has received an invitation to one of his lavish parties.”

Oliver had no idea whether Henry understood anything he had read, but the soothing cadences of his reading voice seemed to give his old friend pleasure. Henry had been a dear friend to Oliver, and if this small act leavened the long emptiness of his days then it was the least he could do.

He read a couple of chapters, regaling Henry with the tale of Nick’s experience at the party and the comical realization that almost none of the partygoers actually knew their host. As Oliver finished the section where Nick and Jordan Baker finally meet the reclusive rich man, he closed the book and placed it back in his briefcase. Sunlight was stretching across the wall behind him, and Henry’s eyes were following its growing intensity. His hands unclasped and his mouth opened as he looked out through the barred window.

“The sun,” said Henry. “It’s alive you know. The fire inside it. I’ve seen the fireflies that burn when they come down from the sun and the stars beyond. They come down and they burn everything they touch. Ash and cinders, that’s all they leave behind.”

Oliver cleared his throat and took Henry’s hand. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve written to a friend of mine about you, Henry. His name is Dr. William Hillshore, and he is an eminent psychologist from England who teaches at the Jesuit College of San Francisco. If you don’t have any objections, I’d like to have him take a look at your case notes. He’s rather brilliant, you know, and the academic grapevine has it that he’s dealt with some rather challenging and…unusual cases. I’ve known and corresponded with him for many years now, and his work with British veterans of the Great War is quite groundbreaking.”

“Hillshore?”

“Yes, that’s his name. Do you mind at all?”

Henry shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t. But he won’t be able to see the fireflies.”

“I expect he won’t,” said Oliver. “But he might be able to help you.”

“No one can help me,” said Henry, and the finality of the words almost broke Oliver’s heart. “142, 142, 142…”

Oliver had heard this mantra of numbers before, but now, as then, he had no idea what they represented. Henry’s pathology was such that whenever those numbers were recited it was an indication he was becoming agitated. Oliver switched tack, changing the subject to something less likely to upset his friend.

“I had another letter from the
Journal of Anthropology
, you know?” said Oliver. “They were going to be publishing my research on the Yopasi tribe in the fall edition, but with all that’s happened they’ve pushed it back to the spring. To ‘give me the opportunity to revise my findings.’ It’s all politics, of course. They think I’m a fraud, Henry. Trying to hoodwink them and make them all look foolish. As if I don’t already look foolish enough.”

Henry ceased his repetition of the number 142, and his face took on a more serene look, like the pictures of soldiers Oliver had seen upon their return to the United States after the war. They looked right through the camera lens, as though not seeing it, as though they had seen things their minds could not process. Oliver thought they looked desperately sad, and hoped Hillshore could make some headway with Henry’s file.

“Three years of work up in smoke,” Oliver continued. “Three years living in primitive huts and researching the Yopasi, and for what? For them to up and damn well disappear on me, that’s what. I ask you, where does a whole tribe of Pacific Islanders go? It looked like a hurricane had hit their island, but I checked the meteorological data for the entire six months I was back in the States, and there wasn’t a single thing out of the ordinary. If I didn’t know better, I would think I
was
trying to mount an elaborate hoax.”