Ghouls of the Miskatonic (The Dark Waters Trilogy) (10 page)

“Yes,” said Amanda, absurdly happy that this aspect of her memory seemed unaffected. “I remember thinking that it was a bit dark.”

Oliver tapped his pencil on the legal pad. “That office you saw belonged to David Rosen, the university’s ‘artist-in-residence,’ and he hasn’t been in his room for some time. A couple of years ago, he started behaving rather strangely, painting all manner of disturbing canvases, many of which match your dreams and this image from the Yopasi. What do you think of that?”

“I think it’s horrible,” said Amanda. “I wish I’d never seen that terrible painting.”

“Well, yes, of course, but it’s intriguing, isn’t it?”

“I suppose,” said Amanda. “Do you know how I can stop these dreams from coming? I’m scared to sleep, and I…I think I’m being watched.”

“Watched? By whom?”

“I don’t know,” said Amanda. “Just last week I was attacked as I was on my way home from the bank. I work as a teller at the First Bank of Arkham. It was dark and I didn’t see them, but I ran before they could grab me. I got home to Dorothy Upman Hall and told Rita, but she said they were probably after her.”

Seeing Oliver’s look of puzzlement, Amanda said, “I share a dorm room with Rita Young, she’s a black girl from New Orleans. I’d borrowed her coat and she said that maybe the guys who jumped me mistook me for her. I believed her, but now I’m not so sure.”

Oliver took a breath, shocked to hear that such a thing had happened so close to the campus grounds. Frat-boy pranks and drunkenness were as rowdy as this part of town usually got...until recently it seemed. To hear of another potentially violent assault was disturbing to say the least.

“I take it you reported the matter to the police?” he asked.

“No, there didn’t seem like much point,” said Amanda. “I figured Rita was probably right, and the cops probably weren’t going to make a big deal out of a black girl getting beaten up.”

“I think you are maybe doing them a disservice, but I see your point,” said Oliver.

“So what am I going to do?” asked Amanda. “How do I get these crazy dreams to stop?”

“I don’t know, Miss Sharpe,” said Oliver. “But I promise you I will try to find out.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Minnie looked him square in the eye and said, “Just so you know, Rex, honey. You owe me big time for this.”

Rex smiled and wiped the rain from his forehead. Their stakeout of the athletics ground had lasted the better part of three hours, and despite the cold and enforced stillness, he was enjoying himself. Minnie had her camera set up on its tripod, draped in a waterproof tarp covered with leaves and branches to hide it from the casual observer.

The lens was aimed at the murder scene, the area still taped off, but looking like it had been abandoned. Rex didn’t know why the cops were bothering to keep the area marked. The light rain earlier in the evening would surely have washed any remaining evidence away.

“You can’t fool me, sweet cheeks,” said Rex. “I know you’re loving this as much as I am.”

“True, but you still owe me,” she said.

“Fair enough. This guy turns up, I’ll treat you to a steak dinner at Anton’s. Good enough?”

“Good enough,” she agreed with a triumphant grin. “And he’s gonna show.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I read a lot, you know? Police reports and scare stories from newspapers around the world. Seems like a lot of these sickos like to go back to the scene of the crime.”

“What for?”

“Beats me. Maybe to get some weird kick coming back and reliving the murder. Or maybe they just get their yuks from knowing the cops don’t have a thing on them, like Leopold and Loeb did until they got caught.”

Switching tack, she said, “You know how good it feels when you think you’ve gotten away with something? I think maybe this guy’s like that.”

Rex gave her an admiring look. “Clever girl, we’ll make a reporter out of you yet.”

“Why would I want that?” smiled Minnie. “I prefer being an artist to a hack.”

“You cut me deep, milady,” answered Rex. “But I like your thinking. In any case, this is the best chance we got until we get word back from the state bureau in Boston about those plates.”

“I’d bet the farm it’s an ex-soldier.”

Rex returned his attention to the athletics ground, feeling a tremor of unease as his gaze roamed the empty bleachers and football stand. It was funny how an absence of daylight could make even the most humble structures look threatening. What was, during the day, full of lively fans and cheering supporters, now seemed like some dismal amphitheater, an elevated box where emperors watched gladiators fight to the death.

Places that ought to be filled with life should never be visited when empty. It made them dreary and dreadful. Rex let his stream of consciousness flow though him and into his pencil, letting the tip scratch its way across the page.

Place of execution?

Dumping ground?

Body not concealed. Killer wanted it to be found.

A murder done for show as much as the act itself
.

“Pretty perceptive,” said Minnie, reading over his shoulder.

“Just some thoughts,” muttered Rex.

Minnie looked set to answer when they both heard the throaty growl of a powerful engine. Twin beams of harsh light speared onto the athletics ground as a motor car bumped its way over the rough track that lead back to the Aylesbury pike.

“I like my steak rare,” said Minnie as the car turned side on to them and Rex recognized it as the same Crossley they’d seen earlier.

“I’ll be sure to tell Anton personally,” he answered, watching the heavyset man in a brown duster and fedora climb down from the driver’s seat. He smoked a cigarette and the tip was a tiny glowing bead of orange as he walked around the running track to where the sagging police tape flapped in the wind. He knelt beside the taped area and pressed his hand to the grass, like a fairground fortune teller playing at reading a mark’s aura.

“Told you,” hissed Minnie. “Coming back to the scene of the crime. It’s classic.”

Rex didn’t answer, studying the man intently as he bowed his head. The cigarette end briefly illuminated his face: hard, deeply lined features etched with rigid control, yet looking ready to crack with sadness. Or was it guilt? Rex had no idea what the face of a killer would look like, but if he were to place bets, this guy’s face wouldn’t be far off. The man had powerful hands that looked used to a life of hard work, fists that looked capable of breaking a jaw without breaking a sweat. Suddenly this stakeout didn’t seem like such a clever idea.

He turned to Minnie to tell her to keep quiet, when her camera whirred and clicked as the lens snapped and took a picture of the kneeling man. Rex looked up in alarm. Like many things, the click of Minnie’s camera seemed hideously out of place in the dark. He’d never noticed how loud it was before now.

The kneeling man looked over at them and took a last drag of his cigarette before throwing it aside. He reached beneath his duster and pulled out a long-barreled Colt, and Rex was again reminded of his first impression that this man was some kind of frontier lawman from Cheyenne or Deadwood.

“You’ve got five seconds to come out from those trees before I start shooting,” said the man in a voice that was pure Bronx. So much for the Wild West.

“Hooey,” said Minnie. “What do we do?”

“What the hell do you think we do? We come out from the trees,” said Rex, stepping from his hiding place and raising his hands in surrender. Minnie came after him, and they walked out to stand in front of the man.

He looked them up and down, and Rex saw him relax, deciding in an instant that they were no threat to him. Quickly, Rex warmed to Minnie’s idea that this guy was an ex-soldier. He had a look that suggested violence was never far from the surface, as though he stood in a constant state of aggressive readiness.

“Who are you?” he said. “And what in heaven’s name are you doing here?”

“We could ask you the same thing,” answered Minnie with typical defiance.

“You could,” said the man, “but I’m the one holding the gun.”

“Rex Murphy,” said Rex. “And this is Minnie Klein. We work for the
Advertiser
, so lots of people know where we are. You understand?”

“Reporters?” said the man, almost spitting the word. “I shoulda guessed.”

“Okay, your turn,” said Minnie. “What are
you
doing here? Coming back to get some sick thrill out of what you did?”

“Jeez, Minnie, way to go antagonizing the man with a gun aimed at us,” hissed Rex.

Minnie narrowed her eyes and stared hard at the armed man, looking deep into his haunted eyes. The moment stretched until she let out a short bark of amusement and lowered her hands, as though she’d just had an epiphany.

“He’s not going to shoot us, Rex,” said Minnie. “I’m not scared of him.”

“You’re not?” asked the man. “Why not?”

“Because you didn’t kill that girl,” said Minnie. “I saw it in your eyes as you looked at the ground, and it’s taken me till now to realize the truth. No one who looked that sad could have killed her.”

The man lowered his gun and slid it back into a worn leather holster at his side.

“You’re right,” he said. “I didn’t kill her.”

“You’re here to find out who did, aren’t you?” said Rex, catching Minnie’s drift.

“That I am,” said the man. “Just like you by the looks of things.”

“We thought the killer might come back here,” said Minnie.

The man nodded. “I thought so, too, but looks like we’re both wrong.”

“Listen, we told you who we are,” said Rex. “How about you do likewise, huh? Tell us who you are and why you care about what happened here.”

“I’m Gabriel Stone,” said the man, his voice taut with emotion. “And I care because the girl that was murdered here was Lydia. She was my daughter.”

* * *

Though a native of Baltimore, Oliver Grayson’s academic career had truly begun at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He had prospered for a time within the walls of that institution of higher education, but had quickly realized the future direction of his studies needed an atmosphere in which no branch of research was deemed too unknowable. Oliver’s interest in Jules Verne had spurred his interests toward cultures on the fringes of belief: the unknown, the feared, and mysterious. These were the forte of one particular professor at Brown who would soon become his mentor.

Professor Morley Dean was a man to whom the study of the arcane was an obsessive métier—a scholar who looked deep into the hidden meanings of everything. His studies had been extensive and the wealth of knowledge contained within his febrile brain had acted like a lodestone to Oliver. Morley had traveled widely and read wider still, his expertise in ancient languages and their relation to the cultures that had given rise to them second to none. Regarded with some trepidation by his fellow professors, Morley had nevertheless published numerous manuscripts that were now considered authoritative on the study of language and its roots.

Finding common cause together, Oliver and Morley had mounted an expedition to the farthest reaches of Alaska to study the cult practices of its coastal communities and the mysterious nomad tribes on both sides of the Bering Strait. It had been a testing time, as several among the expedition had fallen gravely ill from a wasting sickness that even a respected physician from Anchorage was at a loss to explain. Two men had died of the inexplicable contagion, as one of the worst winters Alaska had ever seen ravaged the landscape with freezing winds and blizzards that threatened to drive the expedition into the sea. Yet they had endured, and by the end of their stay in Alaska, had uncovered much that shocked them and much that had horrified the trustees of Brown upon its publication.
 

The bloody histories, blasphemous pantheons, and obscene rituals of these isolated communities and tribal groups were perverse and sickening, with dread rites that Oliver might never have believed had he not seen evidence of them with his own eyes. Just penning such debaucheries for the
Journal of Anthropology
had shaken Oliver’s mental fortitude. As great an effect as the expedition and its aftermath had upon him, the consequences for Morley were far worse. Their discoveries and the physical privations of the journey had taken their toll on Morley’s mental health, and after months spent with an ancient book of evil reputation uncovered in the ruins of an abandoned Russian whaling station, his mind had finally strained beyond its ability to cope.

Morley had peered too deeply into mysteries he never dared communicate to Oliver, and within a month of their return, he had himself committed to the Hudson River State Hospital for a time. Within a year, Morley had recovered from his ordeal enough to leave, but the Alaskan expedition had cost both he and Oliver dearly, physically and in terms of their standing within the university. It had only been a matter of time until Morley had been compelled to quit his position as Senior Professor of Ancient Languages.