The Damned Highway (11 page)

The one thing that is noticeably absent in Arkham is places of worship. There are no churches, or at least I encounter none. Arkham has a distinct lack of Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Seventh-Day Adventists, Baptists, Christian Scientists, or any other mainstream religious group. It's not just that there are no churches. That in and of itself is strange. But perhaps more alarming is that I see no traditional religious symbolism of any kind—there are no crosses or Jesus fish or Stars of David or crescent moons. Not even a shrine to Holy Mother Mary in anyone's front yard.

What Arkham lacks in churches, it makes up for in asphalt and traffic lights. There are more roads in Arkham than you'd think; it was once a bustling little city of its own, Boston notwithstanding, but now, in 1972, Arkham looks distinctly as though a neutron-bomb test had been conducted—the buildings stand, but they're mostly empty of people. This is confirmed with each passing block. Miskatonic University is only a partial exception; I drive right onto campus, past the wrought-iron gates that look like they're being strangled by dead, withered ivy, and onto one of the vertices of the Blaylock Trapezium. There is no campus security guard to greet me, but there is a memorial garden, snowed under now, with a bronze plaque commemorating it in the names of Henry Armitage, Francis Morgan, and Warren Rice. I slow down to read the plaque in its entirety. Apparently, the three are former faculty members, now deceased. Armitage, the sign tells me, was the head librarian and passed away in 1946. Rice was a professor of classical languages who died in 1957. Morgan is listed as a professor of medicine, comparative anatomy, and archaeology who lived until 1966. Obviously, he or she was the golden boy . . . or girl. The memorial doesn't tell me why they are being honored, or what they did to deserve such a remembrance. I wonder if Haringa knew any of them, and if they were messed up in the same garbage as he is.

Like the rest of the place, the memorial garden is still. There is no laughter, no voices, no traffic of any kind. Birds do not sing here, and something tells me that even if it were springtime, the insects would avoid this place. Indeed, the entire campus is almost desperate in its emptiness, and my journalistic instincts tell me it has nothing to do with the winter temperatures. I'm tempted to leave my keys in the ignition, if only to see if the Republican rumors are true, that I'll return to my rental to find it inhabited by a hundred naked college hippies smoking and humping in honor of the full moon. I don't, though. I haven't gotten this far in life by being stupid. I stuff my kit bag under the seat, but I take my keys, and my press pass, and the last little bit of fungi from Yuggoth I have, and then I go to find someone, anyone, who might talk to me. This will be fun. I can see tomorrow's headlines before my eyes:

Arkham Gazette
:
unruly man claiming journalistic background ejected from miskatonic divinity school seminar.

Arkham Advertiser
:
textile mill closes, four hundred jobs to end by friday.

——

“This school is like a shadow out of time,” Betsy Ferrar tells me over coffee. She's a twenty-year-old coed, and a legacy. Her grandmother was in the first Miskatonic University class to admit women, and her mother also attended. Betsy claims to have been conceived in the Ollman dorms. “Seriously. Do you know what they serve in the cafeteria on Mondays? Corned beef hash, because pot roast is on Sundays and the hash is made from leftovers. I mean, can you imagine that? Do you think you could walk into a restaurant anywhere in Boston and order a corned beef hash off the menu? We don't even have Coca-Cola machines on campus. It's like we're living in the fifties.” When I remind her that the fifties weren't really that long ago, she waves me off. Betsy is that enthusiastic, and that outraged over everything. The Equal Rights Amendment, Nixon in China, how CBS put
The Waltons
on against both
The Mod Squad
and
The Flip Wilson Show
this season “to keep the black man down,” she says. She's a proud, rabid Democrat, having scandalized the Ferrar family, and an “endangered species” here at Miskatonic. “I have to go down to Boston proper and date BU men,” she explains to me.

But this is not why I am talking with Betsy Ferrar. I do not give a damn about the lack of soft-drink machines in the dorms or how she has to make the trek all the way to Boston just to rut with the Great God Pan of BU men so that she can give birth to more greedy, spoiled little brats like herself. No, I am interested in other things. Betsy Ferrar knows all about the Starry Wisdom Cult, and about my new friend Professor Madison Haringa, who teaches a mandatory course on religion and civilization. I show her the horoscopes in the local papers, and she seems amazed that I've never heard of the peculiar Arkham zodiac. “I'm a Plateau. May. We don't match, I'm sorry to say. That's too bad, because you're sort of cute. You remind me of one of my dad's friends.” She doesn't want to tell me much about Starry Wisdom right now, though the only reason I sprung for coffee was to hear from an intelligent, busty, local girl, but she does have Photostatted notes from Haringa's class, which she offers to me. She promises to come back after class—“Introduction to Neoclassical Economics. More like Introduction to the Unseen Hand of Fascism!”—with some friends who are really tuned in to campus goings-on, and leaves me in the empty campus coffeehouse. There isn't even a barista behind the counter. I get up and pace. Then I light a cigarette. The smoke seems to hang in the air. The jukebox is unplugged, dark. A yellowed flier on the wall advertises a free concert by Erich Zann. I've never heard of him. The grainy black-and-white photo, apparently of Zann, shows a third-rate Donovan, and I imagine that's probably what Zann plays—cheap covers of things like “Hurdy Gurdy Man.” I touch the paper with my index finger. It feels oily and unwholesome.

I sit back down again and peruse Betsy's notes. The outline is in the sort of curlicue cursive writing surprisingly still typical of liberated women. It's just hard to read. My gaze keeps falling from the page. There's nothing useful here—at least, nothing that immediately jumps out at me and grabs me by the throat. Lots of diagrams for a class on comparative religion, or whatever it is.

“Focus, Lono.” My voice seems stifled in the empty room. “You can do this. It's no worse than the Rubén Salazar debacle, and you came through that okay . . . well, comparatively speaking. Those were strange days, and there were strange rumblings in Aztlán, but you've learned a thing or two since then, eh?”

I gird myself, clench the cigarette between my teeth, and try again. From the beginning. I have a sudden urge to read over my own notes instead, then the newspapers again. I reach for my back pocket, expecting to find them rolled up back there, but then I remember that I set them on fire earlier. What time exactly is that spaghetti dinner? They weren't running that stupid comic strip on the funny pages, were they? I never bothered to check, so afraid was I that I'd encounter the cartoon version of myself. Then, my fingers brush the leftover shroom and I realize that I must take it. It will show me what I need to know. I pop it in my mouth, salivate heavily to swallow it, and it hits my stomach like an ineffectual punch. But it's anything but . . . Suddenly the notes make sense, and I'm once again praising those mysterious mushroom farmers in far-flung Yuggoth. I fully intend to visit there one day and sample the rest of their produce. The notes, damn it! Focus on the notes. There's a pantheon of ancient gods who are themselves only dark reflections of dimensions beyond understanding. Indeed, to truly understand them in their entirety would drive a man insane. The Old Ones aren't even so much beings as they are locations, locations such as . . . America. But what will manifest? I flash back to Smitty, drooling blood and gripped with seizures, screaming to me that R'lyeh was rising. Is that what is on the way? Will Cthulhu arrive?

Well, I don't know about Cthulhu manifesting, but Professor Haringa sure does a moment later, and he's got Betsy in tow, along with what looks like a phalanx of Nixon Youth. This isn't the shrooms. This isn't some hallucination. They are here. I can smell their cologne. Most of them are blond, and maybe one could be said to have sandy hair—there's no football at Miskatonic, but intramural men's rugby, clearly that activity is popular enough. Their footsteps ring out sharply in the empty coffeehouse. Haringa is wearing the same clothes that he had on when I first met him, or maybe it's just an identical suit. He meets my eyes and for a moment, he looks shocked. Then he nods, businesslike, as though I were a cocktail waitress who just confirmed his order—dry martini, with a toothpick jammed through a baby's eye for aroma. I snuff my cigarette out on the table.

“Hello, professor. I was in the neighborhood.”

“So, you understand, do you?” Haringa says. “What we're trying to accomplish?”

“Some of it.” One thing a reporter learns, on one's first day, is that people like to talk. They want to tell their story; they rehearse. The average city-desk editor knows how to break a cub in—send him out to go interview the survivors of the local corpse for the afternoon edition's obituaries. You never say, “Tell me about your husband, miss.” You dig up one fact—the late Mr. Bernard was an eagle scout, or a naturist, or the lay speaker at the local church on Sunday—and then you're off to the races. “This is about the remaking of America. A remaking in
His
image. The election: it's more important than any presidential election this century.”

The Nixon Youth snicker as one. It's an ugly sound, and I wish I hadn't left my handgun in my kit bag, which is currently stuffed under the seat of the rental car, because a few well-placed rounds at their center of mass would surely prevent further snickers from occurring. Betsy steps forward and volunteers information. “It's amazing, really, when you think about it. Shouldn't there be one America, after all? I mean, all the Yippies on campus say that there's no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. But—” I see Haringa sharing a conspiratorial look with me, of all people, and rolling his eyes. Deep down, he doesn't like these rich assholes any more than I do, any more than they like themselves. But what does he want of me, then? What
really
?

“Oh, come on,” I say. “Nixon needs to be beaten to death with a pillowcase full of doorknobs for his foreign policy alone. That swine is a blight upon everything that is decent and just. I mean—”

“You mean what?” Haringa says. “Think about it. Who are your real allies, Lono? You're a firearms enthusiast; they're an abiding passion of yours. Don't try to deny it. You've admitted as much in interviews with the press. Indeed, you're a member of the National Rifle Association. Guns make you feel manly, just as your drinking does. And yet, which party is going to take away your guns? The Republicans . . . or the Democrats?” He punches most of the last syllable,
rats
, and it hangs in the air.

“Not just take them away, Mr. Lono,” one of the young fellows offers. “They'll take the guns away from the white people, and redistribute them to the black people! And once the blacks enlist the Jews and the browns and all the other mongr—”

Haringa throws a hand up to silence him and thank sweet baby Jesus it works. There's only so much paranoid rambling one can take from a man in a sweater. Had he not fallen silent, I would have been forced to ram the Erich Zann flier down his throat until he'd choked on it.

The professor's eyes remind me of flint. “Fine, let's talk about foreign policy, then. The war in Vietnam? A Democrat war! And it was Nixon who went to China just a few months ago. Do you know
why
Nixon went to China, Mr. Lono?”

“Sideways vaginas on the concubines?” I glance at Betsy, who isn't blushing. One of the boys is though. Mormon or homosexual—it's so hard to tell sometimes. My money is on Mormon. I make a mental note to fuck with him later, if I get the chance.

“Because he
had
to,” Haringa explains, a bit testy. “And not for geopolitical reasons or to check the Reds, either. Not at all. He went to China, and Kennedy never did, nor did Johnson, for a simple reason—the Democrats are already in constant psychic communication with their opposite numbers across the iron curtain!”

I laugh aloud at that. It's not even one of those awful psychedelic laughs one occasionally lets rip due to cosmic coincidence; it's just a good old-fashioned belly laugh. I feel a strange sense of gratitude towards the man. It's been a long time since anyone made me laugh like that. It feels good.

“Haringa, you're dreaming,” I say. “Either that, or you're just a natural fool.”

“You know I'm right, Lono. I can see it in your expression.”

“That's the shrooms. Listen here. I've met a fair share of paranoids in my time. Hell, I'm one of them, but you are utterly off the wall. Did you get tenure with that attitude? Does the alumni association know? If not, I certainly think someone should inform them.”

He ignores the threat and goes on with his speech; he must have practiced it. Perhaps he is anxious to use it on someone. “Think of it, Lono. Communism. You chafe under the very reasonable demands of your editor, local traffic regulations, the requests of airline stewardesses, zoning laws . . . Do you think you'd thrive under the watchful eyes of commissars, of a State Writers' Union? Do you think you could shoot and bluff your way out of the gulag, because that is what this election boils down to. We”—he gestures expansively with his chin, like Hubert Humphrey might in midgibberish—“are the only people between men like you and the concentration camp. We are your saviors. Do you believe me?”

“No, of course I don't believe you. I don't believe anything I hear anymore.”