Mists of the Miskatonic (Mist of the Miskatonic Book 1) (27 page)

“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,” the 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.”

Walden studied the photographs on the wall. “Do you think she will be recommended for domestic termination?”

Marsh shook his head. “We generally don’t talk about that at this level. That has to end up on the desk of Secretary Johnson and Attorney General Holder for approval. I think right now we can contain her, especially while she is medicated in the hospital. Who would believe anything she says? Who in their right minds, anyway? Besides, we have been relying on targeted termination domestically to smooth things over too much lately. Don’t want the press to get suspicious.”

“Who in their right minds, indeed,” Walden said.

“We will continue to go through her writings, and then make some tough decisions,” Eugene said. “This one about the statue stolen from the monastery is a wild one. I just started the sequel.”

“Really? I can’t wait.”

Marsh pulled a spiral notebook from a drawer and put it on the desk. “Have a seat and listen to this one. It’s the second part to the Tibetan Nazi story.  What happens to the green statue when it ends up in Berlin.”

“Sure,” Namir said while he studied the photos. “It’s funny. Your eyes look a lot like the eyes of the President and the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

Marsh looked askance at the framed pictures, and then smiled. “I doubt that. Everyone knows that the President was born in Hawaii.”

End Book 1

I love the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.  I hope that these stories hold to the spirit of his writings.  To this day he is my favorite author of all time.

Mists of the Miskatonic
is an attempt to ask ‘what if?’  What if Roman soldiers encountered the denizens of the Lost City?  What if the Anti-Christ is Cthulhu?  What if there is more on Mars than just rock and dust? What if the Nazi’s recovered a statue of Cthulhu in their quest for the Holy Grail? What if the folks in a little North Idaho Town worshipped a
s
hoggoth
that lived in an ancient well?  What if our government were infiltrated at the highest levels by Deep Ones?

I don’t believe is sacred cows.  To me, that is part of the horror: that institutions and politicians are privy to secrets kept from the rest of us, and hide the truth.

North Idaho is a beautiful place, and if you ever have a chance to come visit us you should.  Priest River and
Lake
Pond Oreille
can be breathtaking.  The people of Priest River are hardworking and friendly: typical of Idaho. The Heart of the Monster in Kamiah is right by the highway that winds through town.  It’s not very often you can stand by a people’s legend of creation, but you can there. I don’t mean any disrespect by weaving these wonderful places into my stories: quite the opposite.  

Biography

When most everyone else was fawning over prancing, sparkling vampires, Al Halsey was toiling away writing about zombies.  Fantasy zombies, western zombies, zombies and more
zombies.  To say it is an obsession is an understatement.  Very few zombie movies have escaped his cadaverous eye.

He resides in Lewiston, in the Lewis/Clark Valley of the Idaho panhandle, where he has lived all of his life.  Al is a graduate of Lewiston High School and Lewis-Clark State College, both in his home town.  He has spent the last twenty-six years working with children with emotional and behavioral problems and training other professionals to do the same.   Even though most of his coworkers at his day job consider him mentally ill, he generally enjoys his career.  Thank goodness it is a secret that when he was twelve, he thought he was H.P. Lovecraft reincarnated. 

In his free time he trains in martial arts, plays paintball, tells his rescued cats to get off the counters, consumes large quantities of Thai food unapologetically, and loves music.  His favorites are Tantric, Theory of a Deadman, Rob Zombie, Nickelback, the Offspring,
and he is a regular concert goer
.
He visits Montana and the Oregon Coast regularly, and is a connoisseur of fine dining: Arby’s.  Al’s biggest
and best
accomplishment is his
17 year old
son.

Considered by some to be the neighborhood curmudgeon, he wears this title as a badge of honor.  He also hates writing biographies.  You can catch up with Al on Twitter, Facebook and on his website.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Al-Halsey-Author-Page/140691575976282
  

http://www.alhalsey.com/

https://twitter.com/AlHalsey1

Other works by Al Halsey

Hellgate, Montana (soon to be released by Permuted Press) -
http://www.permutedpress.com/

Fire Team (in the anthology
Zombies Galore
by KnightWatch Press)