Reanimators (29 page)

The following years were quiet, for the sisters. Whether out of fear or age, all three ceased to visit Innsmouth or Kingsport. By 1687 their presence on the streets of Arkham was rare, and most of their food and supplies were delivered by members of the Jeffison family who were employed by Ezekiel Chambers, a local man who had taken pity on the sisters. It was the Jeffisons who dismantled Brown Jenkin’s cage and sold it to the local smith. What had happened to the cage’s occupant was never specified, but it was assumed that the beast had died. Later that year, a wagon appeared in front of the Mason home and the Jeffisons loaded it with a selection of furniture and crates. By noon, Abigail Mason, the widow of Simon Prinn, had left Arkham and never returned.

This began a most strange and rapid exodus that culminated in early 1692. By one accounting, from 1688 to 1692 fully fifteen percent of the villagers had left Arkham, and with them the vast majority of the children delivered by the Masons. Many made clear their destinations as the more urban and civilized cities of Boston, Providence, New York, Philadelphia or even Charleston. Others, such as the Whateleys and Bishops, traveled northwest along the Miskatonic River, settling wherever they could and founding the towns of Foxfield, Zoar, Duxbury and New Dunnich. With the Whateleys traveled Hepzibah Mason, widow of Jeremiah Watkins, who, like her sister Abigail, never again returned to Arkham.

The departure of her sisters seemed to embolden Keziah, who reportedly took to walking through the town and apparently peeking through windows at all hours of day or night. Fisherman and dockworkers, who now seemed to dominate Arkham’s growing waterfront, regularly reported seeing her on the marshy island in the middle of the Miskatonic River, though how she reached the island is not known. Children fled and mothers crossed themselves as she hobbled down the road, her days as a respected midwife long forgotten as the town expanded on both sides of the river. The rumors of violet lights and strange noises proliferated. Tales told in roadhouses were retold in inns and exaggerated beyond belief. Any foul turn or ill luck was attributed to Keziah Mason, whether it was lost livestock, a dry well, or a dead child.

The rest of the story is well known. That it was Matthew Derby who accused Keziah of witchcraft, and more than a dozen villagers would testify that they had been molested by her or her demon rat Brown Jenkin is a matter of public knowledge. That after days of torture Keziah Mason confessed, was sentenced to death and mysteriously escaped, driving her guard mad, is also generally accepted. Yet for all this knowledge both common and uncommon that we had uncovered, more was yet to come.

It was the middle of October of 1927 that Gilman cajoled me into traveling out to the island in the river. Gilman had become obsessed with tracking down as much about Keziah as he could. We had already been to Kingsport and gone through the files of the Kingsport Mercantile Company, and while there Gilman had taken a rubbing from the gravestone that marked the plot of the long-dead stepsister for which Keziah had been named. We had even traveled to that dark valley north of Meadow Hill and taken notes on the stone dolmens that lay scattered there. Unwilling to wait for more seasonable weather, Gilman and I made arrangements to borrow a small rowboat from one of the many unsavory wharves that dot the Arkham harbor, and on the morning of October seventeenth made our way out to the low swampy island, braving the flotilla of barges that were endlessly moving up and down the river, transferring bales of unidentifiable cargo. We spent the morning creeping through the underbrush searching for the standing stones that Reverend Philips had described in his text Thaumaturgical Prodigies in the New-England Canaan. Gilman felt sure these were what had interested Keziah in the island. It was difficult work, and we found ourselves assailed by vines, creepers and roots at every turn. Thankfully, no insects or snakes seemed evident on the island, and I assumed that such creatures had all taken to their over-winter habitats. Likewise, there were also no birds, waterfowl or otherwise on the island. This I took as curious, as in the last few weeks, Arkham had seemed to be resplendent with the rustle of wings and the harmonious twittering and calls of all sorts including doves, whippoorwills, thrushes and the ever-filthy coterie of pigeons. That such abundance was not present on the island was somewhat unnerving. Moving into the uplands, we thankfully spied our first evidence of animal life on the island: in the bare mud bordering the swamp we could see the tracks of what could only be described as a raccoon or weasel of considerable size. Such a beast could easily and quickly depopulate an island of its resident beasts, and birds, particularly hatchlings, would be easy prey as well. Indeed, given the size of the tracks, Gilman and I both noted that such an animal could likely do us bodily harm as well.

We climbed up the muddy hillside, and discovered three irregularly spaced boulders that sprang up out of the earth, which we estimated at over seven feet tall and four feet wide. Each was covered from pinnacle to base with strange shallow curves and angles, caked with a foul-smelling brown crust that I could not identify. That they were individual stones could have been of some dispute, for as we cleared away mud from the base, so as to reveal partially concealed carvings, we uncovered even more such carvings. Indeed, using some fallen branches as crude shovels, we dug for three or four inches and found no end to them, although we did find that the worn smoothness of the upper portions did not extend to the lower sections. The muddy ground of the island concealed jagged outcroppings and shards of loose rock, upon which I was unfortunate enough to slip against and suffered a short and shallow gash upon my ankle. Ill-equipped to mount a serious excavation, we resigned ourselves to the process of copying the glyphs as best we could. After several hours, the day turned cold, and after some insistence on my part, Gilman finally agreed to return to the mainland. Our trip back was uneventful and we agreed to meet at the docks again the next morning.

We made two more such trips to the island before we resolved that we had to our satisfaction captured all of the stone inscriptions. Though I will admit that our decision was also influenced by the somewhat pointed questions of several unsavory characters who had taken too much of an interest in our outings. It was these drawings and rubbings that Gilman carried with him when in November he burst into Professor Upham’s office, disturbing a meeting with the university president, Dr. Wainscott. Despite pleas from both, Gilman proceeded to ramble on at length on the most wild of notions concerning Keziah Mason, the ancient markings and certain things he had gleamed from the Necronomicon. What Gilman had said exactly he never did tell me, but whatever it was, it had earned him an unofficial rebuke from Upham and the department. His independent studies were suspended, all access to special holdings was revoked, and his class work was reduced. He was ordered to visit Dr. Waldron, who after a brief examination and discussion suggested rest and prescribed a light sedative.

It was then, in a disgruntled fit, that Gilman tried to distance himself from the university by moving out of the campus dormitory and into the vacant garret room of the Witch House. That the landlord Dombrowski had not wanted to rent the room to anyone, let alone a wild-eyed student, was forgotten when Gilman offered to pay double the going rate. It was thus that we two came to be sitting around the common rooms of the house and discussing Keziah Mason when we were joined by another resident, Joe Mazurewicz, who oddly enough had his own tale to tell about the old witch.

Joe’s father had been Polish, but his mother had been of the old Burke family that had lived in Arkham since it was founded. According to Joe, the Burke family had long ago split between those that still lived in Arkham, and those that had like so many others left the village about 1690. The split had come between two brothers, the older Lemuel and the younger Thaddeus. Upon the death of their father, Lemuel had inherited the family estate and documents, and amongst the papers he had found a sealed envelope addressed to him from his grandmother, Deborah Zellaby. The matron Zellaby wrote at length about observations she had made and grave concerns that she had, out of respect for her son and daughter, declined to discuss. However, in this letter, apparently written knowing her death was near, she made things plain to Lemuel, going into such detail on matters extremely strange. When Lemuel had finished reading the missive he confronted Thaddeus and under the threat of death ordered him to leave Arkham forever.

The Zellaby letter has long since been lost, but its contents were passed down amongst the Burke family and form the stuff of family legend. Lemuel Burke had been born to Eliza and Thomas Burke in 1657, and like his parents and all his relatives, he was a strapping blonde-haired, blue-eyed specimen of health. Thaddeus Burke had been born in 1660, and it was his birth that the Mason sisters had helped with that gained them such fame as midwives. Thaddeus was the opposite of his brother, with dark hair, dark violet eyes, a pale complexion and a thin wiry build. At his birth, Deborah Zellaby had suspected something, but lacking evidence she said nothing. It was through the course of years that Zellaby watched what was happening in the village; she watched the Masons and noted which children they birthed, which children died, and which children lived. Children brought into the world by the Masons flourished, while those that they did not, tended to struggle to survive. This was particularly noticeable amongst the younger siblings of those children birthed by the Masons, who seemed prone to disease and the occasional lethal accident. All this the old matron wrote about in her letter, and all of it but the most circumstantial of observations. Yet it was the other thing that Burke had noted that had so enraged Lemuel and driven him to banish his brother Thaddeus. For his brother bore no resemblance to his family, and yet bore strong resemblance to the hundreds that had been born and thrived in Arkham since 1660. A whole generation which, regardless of family, had the same dark-hair and dark-violet eyes as the women who had supposedly only helped to bring them into the world, Abigail, Hepzibah and Keziah Mason!

Despite the fact that Mazurewicz was something of a drunkard, the story he told chilled me, and with my mind filled with what Deborah Zellaby had come to believe about her own grandson, and the implications thereof, I found no comforting sleep that night. It was Mazurewicz’s tale that drove me to begin my own research into the life and legends surrounding Keziah Mason. November came and went, and December brought us to winter break. Gilman went to visit family in Haverhill, and then to visit a new mill his family had built in Maine near Gates Falls. Given my rather meager finances, I took the bus for the short journey to my home in Kingsport. There amongst my friends and in my family home, I set about initiating my own more personal study of Keziah’s dark legacy.

In February our return to the ivory-columned halls of Miskatonic University brought to us the first hint of the supernatural. The incident was so simple, and yet it is undeniably the first in a series of preternatural events that would, in their course, lead Gilman first to madness, and then to his singularly horrid death. Gilman and I had made our way to the great library, cursing the masses that were uncommonly cluttered about the University grounds. It was not merely the student body that milled about the commons, but strangers as well, some of whom wore military uniforms and bore with them firearms and similar such weaponry. Others wore charcoal suits and traveled in pairs, dominating the sidewalks, oblivious to any other pedestrians they might come across. Ostensibly, these hordes had invaded Arkham in response to some secretive government action that had sealed off the aged port town of Innsmouth. Rumor had it that nearly the entire village had been arrested, charged with the smuggling of liquor and other contraband. The streets of Arkham were wild with speculation, and every tidbit of unfounded speculation and gossip concerning Innsmouth seemed to travel across the city like wildfire.

In the library Gilman and I marched defiantly through the marble halls on a mission to persuade Dr. Armitage to restore Gilman’s access to the rare book room in general, and the Necronomicon in specific. Unfortunately, both Armitage and the Necronomicon were already occupied. For the better part of an hour the old librarian stood watching as the most curious of characters sat hunched over the ancient grimoire, all the time making seemingly endless notations in an old leather journal. Gilman fumed over what he viewed as an invasion of his personal area of research, and when the stranger finally made to leave, speaking to Armitage in a rough and uncouth manner, Gilman rose to intercept the aged librarian.

It was at this moment that Gilman had his first and cascading preternatural encounter, for as the stranger rose it was to reveal a countenance and stature that brought to mind the ogres and trolls of legend. The man easily stood over seven feet tall, and his bulk was barely contained by his thread-worn suit and broken shoes. That a thin black tie and aged hat framed his face served only to draw attention to the man’s huge and goatish head which was covered by a thick beard and eyebrows that created the illusion of fur. That fine black hair was apparently endemic throughout the entirety of his body, for it peeked out at the cuffs of his sleeves, and several clumps were visible between the buttons of his shirt.

As Gilman crossed his path, the lumbering giant paused and stared down at the diminutive man blocking his way. His gaze wandered in my direction and then back to Gilman. A massive hand reached out and came to rest on Gilman’s shoulder. With little effort, the monstrous man gently moved Gilman to the side and grunted in a deep and curious way that reminded me more of the bellows made by frogs or whales, rather than a true voice. What was more curious was what he actually said: “Yew should know better than to stand in my way, sir,” and then he turned to look at me, “and yew should know better too, little cousin.” In those huge violet eyes I saw no empathy, no humanity, and if there was any evidence of emotion, all I could see was pure unadulterated hate. Who the monstrous figure in the library was, and if it was his casual touch that brought on the ensuing events, I cannot say for certain, but it was on that very night that Gilman’s bout of brain-fever and strange dreams were to first manifest.