The Arcanum (6 page)

MULLIN BURST THROUGH the doorway of the building moments later. His bowler was missing, and his bald head was beaded with sweat. He stumbled into the middle of the street, shaking with rage.

Wally trundled out behind him.

There was no sign of Doyle.

“Anonymous tip, eh, Wally?” Mullin growled.

“That old-timer sure can move,” Wally said, rubbing his belly.

“This case stinks.” Mullin stuffed his .45 back in its holster as Wally held up his bowler. Mullin snatched it out of his hands. “Bloody lot o’ help you were,” he snarled.

DOYLE JOGGED THE seven blocks to Broadway, where he grabbed the railing of one of the last trolleys headed uptown.

Seating himself in the back, he checked his pocket watch. The time was 12:33 A.M.

“Pardon me,” Doyle asked a tired woman clutching a brown bag of vegetables, “but will this trolley take me to the Penn Hotel?”

The woman stared blankly at him and nodded.

Doyle sat back and examined the evening’s events. The situation was deteriorating faster than he’d feared. Duvall’s death, the theft of the Book, and Lovecraft’s involvement in murders three thousand miles away—surely these were all connected. Yet Doyle felt he was seeing only a single thread of a vast and complex web of conspiracy.

Perhaps in the years since he had last seen Lovecraft, the man had undergone horrible changes. Knowing Lovecraft’s mind, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. But Doyle dismissed the thought. Lovecraft had been framed. The man was many things, but not a murderer.

And the coin? Mullin recognized the coin, and had seen it as some proof of guilt or complicity. So much for anonymity. Doyle cursed. He had managed to blunder his way right onto the New York City Police Department’s Most Wanted list. His younger self wouldn’t have made such a miscalculation, wouldn’t have carried I.D., wouldn’t have produced the coin so casually. Wouldn’t even have approached Lovecraft’s apartment so cavalierly. He was long out of practice, and in this sort of game there were no second chances. Today, he’d done more damage than good. Perhaps tomorrow he could set it right—if he wasn’t arrested in the meantime.

The Penn Hotel was a welcome sight by the time Doyle arrived. A doorman ushered him into the old-world charm of the lobby. Exhausted, Doyle retrieved his key from the desk and went up to his suite.

Once inside, he took off his jacket, loosened his tie, rolled up his sleeves, locked the door, and wedged a chair underneath the knob. Then, satisfied, he loaded his pipe and lit it, puffing sweet smoke while staring out of his fourth-story window.

After several minutes, he locked the window, too. He placed his trinkets, wallet, change, pocket watch, magnifying glass, pipe, and tobacco on the bureau. From his suitcase he retrieved a small framed photo of Kingsley in his Royal Air Force uniform. He placed it on the bed stand, and positioned it favorably in the light. He then removed the rest of his suit. In nightshirt and ankle straps, he sat on the bed and pulled the window table to him. Glasses balanced on his nose, Doyle dipped his pen and proceeded to write a letter to his wife, feeling her absence as strongly as the pull of the hunt.

11

HENRY THE KNOB swayed in the cool autumn air outside Chick Tricker’s Fleabag on the Bowery and thought about throwing up. He wiped cold sweat from his deformed forehead—his namesake—and willed his stomach to settle. Then he straightened his crooked tie and stuffed his shirt back in his pants, and strolled down the avenue like a man trying very hard not to look drunk.

A drunk was a mark and, on this particular street, a mark was a bad thing to be. The Knob didn’t need to worry, though; his Tammany connections kept him in the pink with the Five Pointers, and his gambling hall above the Harp House on Park Row made money for the right folks. Still, it was wise to be alert on a Friday night in the Bowery, when every cutpurse and thug was out blowing his earnings at various nightspots like McGuirk’s Suicide Hall, the Plague, and the Dump.

The Knob wasn’t quite ready for the evening to end, however. All that awaited him at home was a wife and twin sons who screamed themselves hoarse. No, the Knob wanted company, and had a wad of dollars in his vest that he was eager to spend.

He weaved his way onto Mott Street to sample the wares parading outside the Inferno club. But it was a sorry lot of toothless hags and he waved them off, disgusted.

In a few blocks, the Knob found his way to Chinatown, which bustled with traffic and stumble-bums trading time at the gambling parlors and opium dens set above the vegetable shops.

The Knob got lost in the twisting byways of Doyers Street until he found himself in front of the old Chinese Theatre—a once notorious and popular spot for gang-fights until it was shut down and handed over to the New York Rescue Society. The Knob gazed up at the upper-floor windows, and grimy orphans stared back at him.

His buzz now in full retreat, the Knob stumbled down Doyers in search of a taxi or rickshaw—or whatever sort of transport they offered in Chinatown.

Then, “Fancy comp’ny, stranger?” a voice asked from the shadows.

The Knob turned to survey a scruffy waif with huge green eyes leaning against the wall of an alley. Her dirty blond hair was bundled up under a man’s top hat, and her small body hidden beneath a rough gray overcoat.

“How old are you?” the Knob asked.

“Old enough.”

Unbathed though she was, the Knob saw promise. She had all her teeth and a pretty face. Couldn’t be more than sixteen.

“How much?” he asked.

The waif hesitated, seeming to think it over. She wasn’t a professional; the Knob could tell.

“What’s the usual?” she asked.

The Knob’s smile spread, displaying crooked yellow teeth. “A dollar a bump,” he said, lowballing it.

The waif ’s brow knitted. “What’s a bump?”

“I’ll learn you, lovely,” the Knob said. He glanced both ways, then pushed the waif into the alley. He backed her against the bricks, his right hand fumbling in his trousers as the waif lifted her chin to glare at him. “I’ll learn you.” He breathed heavily, pushing her coat open, showing off a dirty dress, nice young legs, and breasts pushed up in a bustier. “I’ll learn you good,” the Knob declared as he pushed his face into her chest and his damp hands grasped her buttocks.

“Aren’t you a tiger?” the waif purred as her hands mussed the Knob’s oiled, thinning hair. Her small fingers toyed with his earlobe. Then she took his ear in her teeth and, with a good hard yank, tore it off his head.

“Ow-gah! Agh!” Blood spurted through the Knob’s fingers as he grabbed at the stump of his ear and reared back.

The waif turned to the blackness of the alley, snarling, “Matthew, you shit!”

A young dandy in a bowler hat, not old enough for a full beard, lunged out of the shadows and whipped a blackjack down across the Knob’s face, bloodying his nose. The Knob grunted and landed on his backside.

The waif wiped the blood off her lips, her green eyes blazing as she drove her boot into the side of the Knob’s head. He toppled sideways into a pile of garbage. She whirled on Matthew, punched him hard in the stomach.

“What the hell, Abby?” Matthew complained.

“Get his billfold, you louse,” Abby ordered as she rebuttoned her overcoat and straightened her top hat, giving the Knob another clean kick in the groin.

He groaned.

Suddenly, a figure in a long coat, carrying a rifle, appeared at the end of the alley. “Show yourselves!” he barked.

“Bloody hell, it’s Dexter,” Matthew hissed.

Abby ran in the opposite direction, down the alleyway.

“Abby? Matthew? That you? I’ll hide yer asses if it is.”

Dexter marched after them, a close-cropped black beard framing his sharp chin and lean features. He stopped and leaned over the Knob, who peered up at him, pleading. “Good Christ,” he muttered. Then he turned to the shadows, where Abigail’s and Matthew’s escaping laughter echoed. “Have you lost your minds, you two?”

ABIGAIL AND MATTHEW exploded out the other side of a tenement building and paused for a kiss beneath an archway, exhilarated by the danger.

Abigail bit playfully at Matthew’s bottom lip, and he cursed. “Damn you, girl!”

She laughed and jogged backwards, daring him to follow.

“I think you’re cracked,” he said.

“I think you’re right,” she answered, crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue. “What were you gonna do back there? Let ’im stuff me like a turkey?”

“You could use it,” Matthew teased.

Abigail grabbed his shirt collar and pulled Matthew into another long, lingering kiss. They stood there, in the middle of the street, lost to the moment. So much so, neither caught the glint of moonlight off blue glass and the flow of a cape as a stranger stepped into the shadows, eyes upon them—watching.

12

THE BELLEVUE HOSPITAL claimed thirty acres on the East River, and stretched some ten blocks north and south. Comprised of two redbrick structures on the southernmost tip of the twenty-building chain, the Institute for the Criminally Insane was walled off with high fences held together with a chain lock and rimmed with razor wire. Though empty of people, the grounds of the ward were attractive, with high trees, benches, and green grass. But those inside did not walk the grounds, a reassurance to the public, since monsters lived inside the walls—violent monsters that had to be chained, drugged, and often beaten to be kept under control. So a calm exterior masked the grotesqueries within.

It was a blustery day with a light charcoal sky, suggesting rain or snow; Doyle could not decide which. It was also bitingly cold, and he pulled his wool collar tightly around his neck as he approached the guard at the gate. After a few words, the gate opened and Doyle walked across the grounds.

The lobby was large, with high columns and a commanding reception desk stationed at the foot of a wide staircase. Doctors and nurses walked their rounds at a medical pace: a step or two faster than the rest of humanity.

It took some arm-twisting to gain access to Lovecraft. He was a suspect in a murder case, and likely a harm to himself or others. He was on a twenty-four-hour suicide watch, which meant he was being restrained and medicated in the most barbaric ways. His paperwork was also being readied for transfer to a more secure hospital upstate, pending trial.

Nobody had visited Lovecraft. And the years and distance had left room in Doyle’s heart to feel some empathy for a man who lived his life with only demons for company.

Like most hospitals in Manhattan, Bellevue was overworked and understaffed. In some cases, there was only one physician for the whole wing, and it was always the insane who suffered the most. Since modern medicine was only beginning to come to terms with such afflictions, the patients often did nothing more than waste away behind bars.

Doyle used a false name on the sign-in sheet and lingered in the nearby corridors to avoid attracting the gaze of the two police officers stationed at the front stoop.

After an hour’s wait, a gorilla-sized orderly with a sprout of wispy hair on his pointed head led Doyle down a set of stairs. A smooth club hung from the orderly’s belt. It looked well used.

“Ten minutes. No more,” the orderly grunted as they descended to the basement level.

Doyle felt a chill scuttle up his back. He did not like this place. He could feel his hands dampen through his leather gloves.

The orderly pulled open the door at the bottom of the stairs and a sickening waft of urine and ammonia stung Doyle’s nostrils.

IT IS 1869. Ten-year-old Arthur struggles to be brave. There
are no electric lights in this corridor, only the fire of lanterns. He
has never smelled anything like this place. It is what Hell must
smell like. He looks down at his untied shoes. Papa will be upset
if he sees. As Doyle kneels down to tie his shoes, voices call to him
on both sides. They say foul words. They spit. They scream.
Doyle’s bottom lip vibrates, but he will not cry. He will not
cry . . .

STILL FOLLOWING THE orderly, Doyle stepped into the corridor. The intermittent electric light gave it a ghostly hue. Sounds bubbled up: gentle laughter, weeping, frantic whispers, barks, shouts, blabbering screams, gibberish. All at once, bodies slammed into steel doors. Wide, staring eyes rolled in their sockets, struggling to glimpse Doyle through the tiny slats at the top of their doors. A lunatic symphony deafened him. His breathing quickened. The gorilla orderly, a few steps ahead, loosened the club from his belt. Everywhere, Doyle saw chattering mouths of yellow teeth, or bloodshot, glaring eyes. The sounds, the sights, reeked of desperation.

“Shaddup! Shaddup!” The orderly rapped his club on the door slats, sending the prisoners skittering away.

“Fuck you, motherfucker—”

“I hear Jesus—”

“They’re in my mind—”

“I fuck you! I fuck you!”

Doyle winced.

DOYLE STANDS SHAKING outside a cage door. He is dressed in
his church clothes and carries a single flower. A blue-capped
guard with a long face and a longer beard scrapes a key in the
lock. The door creaks as it opens. Doyle wants to run but his legs
won’t move. It is even darker inside the cell. A man moves from
where he sits on the edge of a wooden cot nailed into the floor. His
dirty bare foot pushes a slimy bedpan aside. He turns, embarrassed, to young Doyle. His face is unshaven.

Doyle raises his arm, presents the flower. “Hello, Papa.”

His father’s smile looks like a frown. His face, cheeks, and eyelids move on their own. He gestures hesitantly to some sketches
leaning against the wall.

“I drew ye some pictures, Arthur.”

The sketches are of woodland scenes: nymphs and faeries atop
pebbles in streams; pixies peaking out from between rose petals.

“Don’ stan’ there like a fool, boy. C’mere, then.”

Doyle swallows and steps inside the cage, and it slams shut with
a thunderous clang.

THEY STOOD OUTSIDE the quietest cell on the block. The madness quieted, giving way to a milder din of muttering and weeping. Keys slid into the lock. The door groaned wide. Doyle took a deep breath and entered the cell.

Six delicate bands of light squeezed through a six-barred window, set twelve feet up the wall. Doyle could make out a curled body huddled at the end of an army cot. The door shut behind him. Again, the crawling silence. For all he knew, Lovecraft was dead, the body was so still.

Doyle whispered, “Howard?”

The body did not stir.

“Howard, it’s Arthur. I’m here.”

Still nothing. Doyle tried not to think of what the conditions in the asylum would do to Lovecraft’s particular mental framework. The cells looked like they had never been cleaned. If Lovecraft had not been mad when he entered, surely he was now.

“Howard, I brought you something. I thought you might . . .” Doyle took a pair of clean white dress gloves from his jacket pocket. “Gloves, Howard. I know how you like to wear them.” Doyle leaned over and dropped them by Lovecraft’s inert body. “I thought they might . . . make things easier.” Doyle felt a curdling in his stomach at the thought of doing this all without Lovecraft’s aid. The man’s intellect and knowledge of occult matters might help to put the pieces together. Without him . . .

“Thank you.” The words hung in the air, childlike.

It was the first time Doyle had ever heard Lovecraft utter those words. “You’re very welcome, Howard.”

“I’m afraid . . .” Lovecraft shifted “ . . . that they won’t do me much good.” He lurched out of the shadows, tied in a straitjacket stained with vomit and food. His ink-black hair, normally pasted to his scalp and parted with razor precision, hung greasily into his deeply sunken eyes. Patchy stubble dotted his cheeks. He tilted his head, doglike, taking Doyle’s measure. “Arthur.”

“How . . . how are you feeling?”

“Marvelous. Can’t complain.”

Doyle could not determine the level of damage to Lovecraft’s mind, nor could he interpret the peculiar expression on his face. “I’ve come here to help you, Howard. And in turn, I want you to help me.”

“Really?” Lovecraft stared into Doyle’s eyes as if keen to look through him.

“What I’m about to tell you may come as a shock, Howard. Duvall is dead.”

Lovecraft’s breathing quickened. “You’re lying.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lovecraft worked his way back into the shadows, away from Doyle. “What the hell do you want?”

“I know it wasn’t an accident. Something was taken from the Hall of Relics. A book. An important book.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you do. This is your field—”

“Get out of here. Get away from me.” Lovecraft scuttled farther back.

“Duvall was killed for this book, I know it.”

“I don’t know about any book. Guard,” Lovecraft shouted. “Guard!”

Doyle took Lovecraft by the shoulders and shook him. “Duvall had a map in his office—”

“Don’t touch me! Get away from me!”

Doyle shook him harder. “Howard, what are the secrets of Enoch?”

Lovecraft let loose a high-pitched shriek. He tore himself from Doyle’s grasp and slammed his body against the door. Then he whirled around and stared at Doyle. “Who are you? Why are you using his face, damn you? Show yourself!” Lovecraft crumpled to the floor. “Why don’t you kill me? Just kill me . . .”

“No, Howard, it’s Arthur. Arthur Conan Doyle.”

Lovecraft scrambled across the floor in a pathetic attempt to escape. “No, no.”

Suddenly, Doyle understood. He crossed the room and turned Lovecraft’s face toward him, holding it there.

Lovecraft moaned.

“No. Listen to me, Howard. Duvall’s last words were: ‘There’s someone in my mind.’ Howard, tell me. Who’s after us? Who’s framing you? Who stole the Book?”

Lovecraft suddenly looked as if a pinprick of light had pierced the end of his dark tunnel.

“You are H. P. Lovecraft,” Doyle insisted. “And I am Arthur Conan Doyle. And you know what the truth is!”

“They’re in my mind.” It was almost a gasp of relief. Tears slid down Lovecraft’s cheeks. “They’re in my mind, Arthur. Help me!”

“They won’t take you,” Doyle said softly. “I’m here. They can’t beat us. Your mind is your own. You are Howard Phillips Lovecraft. We’ve faced darker than this, you and I.”

Lovecraft’s teeth chattered, though his raging had subsided. “The Arcanum.”

Doyle nodded. “Yes, the Arcanum.”

Lovecraft shivered like a broken child. “Is this real? I don’t know what’s real.”

Doyle slapped Lovecraft hard across the face. Lovecraft’s head jerked, and a welt rose on his face. He turned back, furious, but his eyes were sane.

“That is real,” Doyle offered.

“Arthur?”

“Yes, Howard?”

Lovecraft started to cry. Doyle patted his shoulder awkwardly. “You all left,” he gasped, between sobs. “You all left me.”

“I’m sorry.” Doyle meant it, too. They’d all gone on to different lives, whereas their work had been Lovecraft’s life. There was no family for him, nowhere else to turn.

“It’s too late.” Lovecraft’s body no longer shook. “You’re too late. They’ll kill me in here.”

“They who?” Doyle persisted.

“It’s like nothing we’ve ever faced.” Lovecraft lifted his tired eyes. “I know what’s happening. That’s why I’m here.”

A club rapped on the door. “Ten minutes are up,” the orderly declared.

Lovecraft panicked, “No! You can’t leave. They’re coming.”

“Time’s up.” The door creaked open.

Doyle took Lovecraft by the arms. “So, these murders are related? To Duvall? To the Book?”

Lovecraft’s eyes were windows onto the abyss. “It’s a conspiracy, Arthur. Two thousand years in the making—”

“Out!” the orderly barked as he stepped inside.

Doyle glared at him, then turned back to Lovecraft. “Tell me.”

Lovecraft stared over Doyle’s shoulder. “Find the others, Arthur.”

The orderly plucked at Doyle’s jacket. “Now—”

Doyle shoved him off. “Manners, friend. Manners.” He stepped into the corridor.

Lovecraft launched after him, only to be halted by the orderly’s arm.

“Back, you loon,” the orderly growled.

“They’ll kill me now. They’re watching all of us.”

“I’ll be back, Howard. I swear it.”

As the door swung shut, Lovecraft’s words hissed from the shadows. “Find the others! We’re running out of time.”

The orderly banged his club on the door and gave Doyle a push.

“Arthur!” Lovecraft’s pleas echoed behind him. “Arthur!”

TEN-YEAR-OLD Doyle sits in the asylum cage on the edge of his
papa’s wooden cot, watching as his papa sketches a picture with
hands that shake.

“They live in the grasses, see?” Papa is almost serene. On the
page, an elfin creature peers mischievously from under an autumn oak leaf. It has pointed ears and slitted eyes, and long, tapered fingers. “ ’E’s smilin’ at ye, Arthur.”

For a moment Doyle forgets where he is. For a moment he is lost
in the picture, lost in the fantasy. He believes the elf exists, somewhere out in the wilderness. His papa makes him believe.

Then the pencil cracks in two with a snap and the makeshift
easel falls over.

Doyle turns to his father, who is stiff as a board, eyes rolled
back. Blood trickles between his lips, and his tongue is caught between clamped teeth. His hands are balled into fists at his sides.
Every vein in his neck swells to bursting. His head knocks back
and forth against the wall, though he utters no sound but a high-pitched whining from the nostrils. More blood pours from between his teeth as his tongue severs.

Doyle sits and watches. He does not understand. He does not
know what to do.

DOYLE SLAMMED OPEN the stairwell door and braced himself on the banister. Epilepsy. There was a word for it, finally. His father had had epilepsy. Doyle held his head in his hand, feeling an almost insane desire to speak with Duvall. Things were spiraling out of control, and he could not keep up. He was an old man, and Duvall had always been the anchor. Duvall was their leader.

But his first concern now was Lovecraft. He would be dead unless Doyle found a way to get him out.

Out of the asylum.

Out of the cell.

Out of the straitjacket.

Not surprisingly, a name came to mind.