The Weird Company (10 page)

I awoke screaming, my heart pounding. My breath was ragged and my throat hoarse from screaming. As panic subsided, my mind slowly rationalized the images I had seen. Such things should not be, I proclaimed silently, cannot be, and no god of earth or sea should be subjected to such horrors. And if it must be, then let it be in the far off abyssal depths where sanity cannot dwell. Let it be there, where pitifully ancient things lay imprisoned, forced against their will to spawn with horrid masses of protoplasmic tentacles birthing forth shoals of mephitic spawn that swarm in great clouds. Billions of larval deep ones, newly born from a horridly forced union, drawn like thousands of other species instinctively to the light. Yet in that place where there is no sun or moon or star, the only light that issues forth is from that ancient one, a dark and forgotten Kronos forced to feed on his own monstrous spawn.

Such things should not be, not on earth; not in the abyssal depths of the sea; nor even in the dreams of things that once were men.

CHAPTER 5

From the Account of Robert Martin Olmstead
“The Scion of Innsmouth”

I awoke to find myself in a sparse room, little more than a cell really. The bed was simple and functional, and covered in plain white linens that matched the bandages that covered my wounds. Not surprisingly I found that the injuries that I had sustained in my flight from Innsmouth had healed substantially. My limbs and back ached, and I had a tremendous headache, but I could find none of the wounds that I knew I had incurred. It was true that since my transformation began in earnest, my recuperative abilities had increased markedly, but such healing as this was wholly unprecedented. Carefully, I rose from the ornate bed and found my footing.

It was then that a raucous sound, that of the door unlocking and creaking open, filled the room. Startled I fell back onto the bed as two figures came through the doorway. The first was none other than the man from Innsmouth that I had encountered in the marsh, the one who had been called Moses. Now in the light his appearance was more discernable and his obvious relationship to the former bus driver was apparent. “There he is,” he said as he approached me, “another bastard scion of the Marshes, Robert Martin Olmstead, the man who destroyed Innsmouth.”

I lowered my head in shame.

“You have no idea what you have done, do you? The people who have died, properties confiscated or destroyed, irreplaceable relics lost forever, centuries of planning wasted.”

He roared into my face and I could see rage building in his strange black eyes. “Do you know what we have had to endure because of you? Innsmouth is lost! The village is occupied. The harbor closed and blockaded. They have bombed the reef. They have gathered us up, loaded us into cattle cars and taken us inland!” He spat this last statement. “There are rumors of experiments, horrible experiments that no man should suffer to endure. My friends and family, centuries of history and plans, all lost because of your hysterical actions. Those few of us who have escaped are forced into concealing our identities and denying our birthright. We were a proud people. Now look at us. Look at what you have brought us to!”

“I’m sorry,” my voice broke and I felt the regret well up in my throat. There was no denying the things he had said. I had come to Innsmouth, and fled from it in terror, not understanding what exactly I was running from, nor my part in it. “I’ve come back, to repent, to make amends. Surely Lawrence, my cousin, has explained all that.”

Moses threw his head back and laughed. “You are sorry! Innsmouth and her people suffer while you walk about unfettered, but you’re sorry.” He turned and threw his head back and seemed to swear at something in the air. He spun back around and scowled at me. “My people will be free Mr. Olmstead! And you my ignorant friend are going to help make sure that happens or die trying. Iä Dagon!”

“But Lawrence . . .”

“YOU FOOL LAWRENCE IS DEAD!” Moses screamed. “He was captured by the soldiers and beaten. Do you know what damages we can endure and still cling to life? They crucified him in Federal Square, tortured him with knives and fire. They used him to try and draw us out of hiding. They let him keep his tongue so he could scream out to us, to beg for help. It was a trap, and both he and we knew it. He hung there for more than a week. Begging for the sea, begging for Pth'thya-l'yi to come and rescue him. He prayed to Mother Hydra and to Father Dagon, and he cursed the soldiers. You thought he was mad before, madness is relative I tell you. When Lawrence finally died, when he finally succumbed to his wounds, it was a relief.”

I was sobbing. “What did they do with the body?” I could hear the pathetic begging that wracked my voice, but I didn’t care. I was past the point of caring what anyone thought of me anymore.

Moses’ eyes grew small and he stared at me with an unrelenting anger. “They left it there, and though we wanted to claim it as our own we dared not go after it. After a day the seagulls finally lost any inhibitions. I suppose the stink was too enticing for them to ignore. It only took a few hours. They came in great flocks, and filled the square like a horde of winged rats. The sound of their cackling calls was almost as horrible as his screams had been. They gorged themselves on his flesh, tore it off in great meaty strips. When they finally finished, not even the bones were left. They carried those away as well, dropped them on to the rocks to shatter them open and pick out the marrow.” I was shaking, with fear, with disgust, with horror, but Moses wouldn’t relent. “Tell me bastard child of Innsmouth, how exactly do you plan on repenting for all your sins? What penance do you think appropriate for the suffering all of Innsmouth have endured because of you?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but no words would come. For the first time in years I did not know what to say. Thankfully the awkward silence was interrupted.

“That’s enough Moses,” said the second man forcefully. “The boy is not entirely at fault.”

The angry, accusatory man mumbled a series of curses and stalked out of the room, leaving me to ponder what he had said. Were it not for the presence of the other man I knew not what I would have done. As he stepped forward out of the darkness, I resolved myself to suffering whatever new burdens would be given me.

This older man was of slight build and had a professional and well-kept appearance. He wore a simple brown suit with a tie which I recognized as being from the medical school of Miskatonic University. If pressed I would have estimated his age as fifty, but his face was tired and worn as if from great stress or world-weariness. Most peculiar was the pronounced difference in skin coloration between his hands, with the right hand being substantially paler and scarred. Indeed as I watched the hand seemed to twitch and jerk involuntarily. I had seen similar conditions amongst those who had served in the Great War, injuries that had never properly healed. Some were proud of their battle scars, but others were sensitive about their conditions. Not knowing how he would react I diverted my attention to the ceiling.

“Let me check your wounds or you won’t be in any shape to help us at all.” He pulled out a pair of spectacles and began to peer intently at the various areas in which I had been hurt but had so miraculously healed. With each inspection there came a generalized harrumph of approval.

“I am Doctor Hartwell, Stuart Hartwell,” he said, grabbing my face and turning my head left and right. “You are a very lucky man. There aren’t many who could have recovered so quickly from such a beating. I haven’t seen such wounds in years, not since the Great War. Those were horrible days, such fierce fighting, and the horrors, the things I saw in St. Eloi and later in Belloy-en-Santerre you would not believe the things men can do to each other. I don’t know how we made it through. Turn please.”

I complied, lulled by the familiarity of the examination process, “We?” I questioned.

The doctor nodded in an odd bobbing fashion. “Well I really. I served in the Great War while my partner, my colleague stayed in Arkham to maintain our practice.”

Sensing an opening, and an opportunity to establish some rapport, I eased into a conversation. “Is that how you were wounded?” I gestured with my head toward his arm, “In the war?”

Hartwell smiled and shook his head. “No. This is the result of a more recent event. Though I suppose, in a way, it is related to my time in service. If I had not gone to war, if I had not returned, if my partner and his wife had not betrayed me, then perhaps this would not have been necessary.” He snorted, acknowledging that he had accepted things the way they were. “Listen to me, rambling on. There is no need to bother you with such things.”

“Please Doctor Hartwell, go on.” I gestured about. “This room may be pleasant, but I am still a prisoner. It has been a long time since anyone has spoken to me, and to be honest I have been too immersed in my own predicaments for far too long. Perhaps it is time I listened to someone else. I think it would be a welcome relief to hear someone else’s problems.” The man stared at me for a moment, and then pulled up a cushioned chair, settled in and told me the story of his wounded right hand.

CHAPTER 6

From the Account of Robert Martin Olmstead
“The Case of Francis Paul Wilson”

I. The Redemption of Dr. Hartwell

You ask me what happened. Why is my right hand scarred? Why are the fingers broken? Why does it tremble so? You ask as if it was a casual question, as if the answer would be easy and quick. I could tell you that it happened in the war, but that would be a lie. The truth is neither easy nor quick. It is a tale that most should not be told. Few need to hear this story but you are part of this now. She has recruited you, summoned you with her psychic beacon. You came here, drawn like a moth to a flame, but you are no thrall. You have the right to know what you are getting involved in, what kind of people you are working with.

You look at me and you see a doctor, a healer. Would it surprise you to learn that I have killed? Not just in the war. I have killed men, and women, and yes even children. I think that if I told you the number of dead I feel responsible for you would be astounded. Yet this is nothing compared to the other crimes I have committed, crimes that resulted in my confinement in the asylum at Sefton. They thought me mad, they looked upon what fragments of notes they could find, and refused to believe what was written there. Later, as the evidence mounted, as the proof became undeniable, they no longer called me mad, but I remained confined. The authorities have no facilities to deal with a man who has learned the secrets of reanimating the dead, and no laws to charge him under. Better to call him mad, and leave him imprisoned.

The authorities may not know what to do with such a man, but others surely do. They came for me, liberated me from that snake-pit of a hospital, and showed me how I could be useful. How I could continue my work. How I could be of service, and make amends for all those I had killed. I did not protest. Even when the first refugees from Innsmouth began to arrive, I did not protest. I had seen such creatures before. I had worked in Innsmouth before, during the occupation. I had tended to their wounds, treated their ailments, and cured their diseases. I knew that beneath the scaly skin, the bulging eyes and the plastic limbs those from Innsmouth were, in a word, only human. It was a chance at redemption, and I jumped at any chance to repair the damage I had done to my own sense of morality.

I had been free just a few weeks, when they took me by car to Providence and then by ferry across Narragansett Bay. It was cold, but I didn’t mind. I had been imprisoned, denied my freedom, standing on the boat, letting the wind and salt air whip through my hair, reminding me that I was still alive. Once on Conanicut Island we made our way to a small private hospital, a resort spa really, the kind of place well-to-do women go to treat the ills they imagine plague them, and better-off families send those members they would rather forget. My employers had come to this place looking for just such a man. An important man, one they had lost contact with him some years earlier, but now were desperate to discover his whereabouts. The trail seemed to end at this place. They had apparently interviewed key staff members in secret. I do not know what they were told, but whatever it was, afterwards they no longer continued to look for Joseph Curwen. And yet here I was, being taken someplace I had no desire to visit. If they hadn’t found Curwen, why was I here?

It was an ostentatious place, all marble and hard woods with modern lines. A bronze plaque listed the name as The Whitmarsh Institute, and beneath in painted letters the names of the directing physicians, Doctors M. B. Willett and B. A. L. Bradley. I had never heard of the former, but knew of Doctor Bradley from her published work in the field of psychoanalysis, of which she was considered one of the leading minds, often compared to Freud or Jung. Beneath their names was a third, Dr. Willis Lynn, listed as the Managing Director.

Dr. Lynn was a nervous man, with darting eyes and sweat on his balding pate. He seemed genuinely relieved to see us, but at the same time it was obvious he was uncomfortable with the situation. He was leading us down, down into the basements of the building, chatting nervously as we went. “You must understand Doctor Hartwell. Your friend has been with us for several years. First as an employee, one of our junior physicians, though to be honest, given his skills, he could have easily been promoted to a more senior position. Later, afterwards . . . well I suppose you would call him a patient, though only I and a few of the orderlies know about him. I’ve kept the event secret, even from the other directors. If word got out, the scandal would destroy the Institute, ruin us all.”

I struggled to fit a question into his monologue. “Doctor, I’m sorry, this friend of mine, to whom are you referring?”

He stared at me for an instant, and then looked away. “We keep him down here. He doesn’t like the light. His needs are—limited. He can talk, it’s difficult but he can talk. He prefers to write. He’s prepared something for you to read. He said you would understand that you would know what to do. I certainly don’t.” He fumbled with a key and then turned the handle on a thick wooden door. “His name is Wilson, Dr. Francis Paul Wilson.”