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The Children
of Cambridge
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The Children
of Cambridge
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The search was well into its third day, but the people of
Cambridge were no closer to finding Shannon Peterson than they were when it all first
started. Though no one wanted to be the first to admit it, most held it in their hearts
that Shannon was lost for good to the mountains, or worse.
The state police focused on two theories. The most likely (and the
one Sherrif Myerson secretly hoped—no, prayed for to be the case) was that Shannon
had simply wandered into the woods and got lost. The countryside was peppered with boarded
up mine shafts, some of which drove straight down into the earth for hundreds of feet. It
would have been easy for the girl to stumble into one of the holes and disappear forever.
Carlton Coal assisted the police as best they could with maps and plans of the abandoned
mine shafts, though they had trouble locating mines sunk prior to 1926. The locations of
these shafts had to come from hearsay and old miner's stories.
The second theory (and most likely, according to the state police)
was that Shannon Peterson was a victim of some wandering child molester. It was no news
that hoodlums and degenerates often took up refuge in the abandoned mining camps above
Cambridge. Ron and Al often raided the places and ran them out, not from fear of what they
would do to the town, but that the mining camps might collapse around them and kill them.
A search of the camps were made the first day and everyone found there was brought in for
questioning. Unfortunately, this yielded nothing.
Meanwhile the lab results on the blood soaked stuffed toy came
back. Much to Ron’s relief, the report indicated the blood was from an animal. The
presence of animal blood on the child’s toy deepened the riddle of Shannon’s
disappearance, though it was reassuring that it wasn’t the girls blood, instead.
Shannon’s imaginary friend, Billy, was quickly dismissed as
irrelevant to the case, but Ron wasn't quite so sure. Somewhere deep in his gut he knew
he'd heard the name before, and not just in passing. Something had happened a long, long
time ago, something that had to do with a Billy. Unfortunately for Ron, gut feelings
usually offered nothing substantial to go on. He filed away the thought, knowing himself
enough to realize that sooner or later it would come to him.
The dogs used at the beginning of the search were never brought
back out of their pens. The slow and steady rain that began soon after the child
disappeared never quit. The weather service called for severe thunderstorms in the area
later that day. Ron watched the line of black clouds approach from the west with a heavy
heart. The last thing they needed was a thunderstorm. Reluctantly, Ron called for all
searchers to return to town to wait out the storm.
When the thunderstorm came, it broke over the town with the fury
of hell. Lightning unlike anything ever seen before in the area slammed into the mountain
side, giving the blackened sky the illusion of a flickering neon sign. The winds that
whipped through the streets of Cambridge tore road signs from the ground and pulled roofs
off of buildings. The driving rain came in upon the wind at a 90 degree angle, so hard and
so fast that you couldn't see ten feet in front of you. The heavens roared and the ground
rumbled for most of the morning and well into the afternoon.
Calls poured in to the sheriff's station—concerned citizens
reporting anything from broken windows to downed power lines. There wasn't much Ron or any
of his people could do about them, but he thanked the callers all the same and refered the
callers to other agencies. The problem was soon remedied, though, when the gale force
winds tore down the main phone lines and replaced the constant ringing with silence.
"I've been thinking," Deputy Dunn mused over the third
cup of coffee that morning. Sal, the dispatcher, rolled her eyes in exhaggerated despair.
To her, the act of thinking and the name Al Dunn were not compatible. Al took no notice of
Sal's exhibition, he'd long since grown used to her barbs at his mentality. "You keep
going back to that imaginary friend of Shannon's."
"Yeah," Ron said, absently wondering where this
conversation would lead. He, too, often wondered about Al's thinking process. The man was
as dedicated as you'd want a deputy to be, but he wasn't the fastest man in the world, if
you get the meaning.
"Seems to me I remember something about that name, myself.
When I was at the academy, we had to study case histories and apply them to current
times."
"What are you getting at?" Ron asked. Al had his
attention, and not for the mere fact that he was making sense. That gnawing feeling in his
gut that he'd heard this Billy thing before was rumbling again, hard and loud.
"Billy." Al mused. "Wasn't there a rash of child
disappearances in some town in Massachusetts back in the early 1960s tied to a guy named
Billy?"
"Hot damn!" Ron slammed his fist onto the top of his
desk so hard he toppled his cup of coffee. The steaming amber liquid spread rapidly,
covering everything. Ron didn’t notice. Damn it all, he knew he’d heard the name
before, he just knew it. Al flinched involuntarily, fearing his boss was going to jump up
and kiss him. The look on Ron's face was a look neither of the two had ever seen before.
It was the face of pure, untouched relief.
During a cop convention in Chicago in 1975, Ron overheard a couple
of old timers from Boston telling tales for drinks and keeping everyone interested until
the next party rolled around. One of them mentioned child disappearances in passing when
the other stopped him cold.
"Now there's something you want to talk about," the
second said, holding a hand in his partner's face to keep him from saying a word.
"Those damn kids never did turn up, and I doubt they ever will. Don't even think
their bones'll ever see the light of day, if you get my meaning."
"Yep," the first agreed, nodding and taking a long
draught from his mug of beer. "Fifteen kids in all just up and disappeared the summer
of '62. All hell broke loose if I remember right. The Arkham police chief and half his
force was dismissed because of it."
"And the only lead they ever had that I know about is on some
guy named Billy." the second cop interrupted. He thought for a minute and then
chuckled to himself. "Didn’t lead anywhere, though, Billy turned out to be an
imaginary friend."
"Granted," the first cop cut in, not to be outdone,
"it was a mighty strange thing that all fifteen kids had the same imaginary friend,
but no one could explain anything different. No one had actually seen Billy, hell, some of
the parents even had tea with the guy."
"Shame, if you ask me," the second concluded.
"Arkham never has had much luck with human folk." Both men looked at each other
and started to laugh, though they never did explain to anyone what was so funny. Nor did
they explain what they meant by their last statement.
Ron related the story with Al and Sally, though try as he might he
couldn't recall either of the cops' names. That didn't matter, something that big
happening in a town the size of Arkham would be easy to trace. Only problem now was the
phones were dead.
Ron walked over to the window and looked out at Main Street.
Better call it Main River for as much water as was flowing down it. Still, the rain had
let up and it seemed the worst of the thunderstorm was over. Up in the mountains the
lightning still danced, but the rumbling was more distant and echoed absently from the
peaks to the east.
"I need to know the moment the phones are back up," he
said to Sally while still looking out the window.
"I don't think that'll be a problem," the woman said.
"You'll hear it start ringing off the hook with everyone and their brother saying
there's been a storm."
"Anything you want me to do, boss?" Al asked.
"Not yet. Believe me, you've done enough already." The
ominence of the statement fell over the trio like a thick, cold blanket. The sheriff's
office fell deathly silent, the only sound the whispering of the wind outside and the
steady fall of rain on the window panes.
The old black man rode in on the tail of the storm, finding
himself on a hill overlooking the town of Cambridge in the late afternoon light. The rain
still fell, though now it was little more than a sprinkle. Thunder shook the heavens far
to the east, though so distant that those in town couldn't hear it. The electric and phone
companies were both quick to return service to the town. Seems that the storm was
localized in and around Cambridge, a strange fact that the weather service found hard to
explain.
The man looked down on the town and took a deep breath. He tasted
the air on his tongue like honey, clean mountain air after a cleansing rain. He lifted his
nose and sniffed like a dog searching out a scent. When he turned to face the mountain,
the hairs in his nostrils twinged slightly.
The man smiled. Billy was here all right, here and waiting to be
caught. A worried looked crossed his face momentarily. He’d assumed Billy would be
caught so many times before, and always the monster managed to stay just one step ahead of
him. But this time felt different. There were players to be introduced into this play that
neither he or his prey had ever encountered before. No, this time was going to be
different. Billy was in for a mighty big surprise.
The old man went by the name of Charlamagne as of late, though how
long as of late was he wasn’t quite sure. It had been so long since he'd heard his
given name that he had forgotten what it was. Thank God his dear old mother weren't still
alive, she'd have a fit to find out her boy didn't know who he was.
Charlamagne came from New Orleans, born and raised into manhood on
the streets of the French Quarter. How long ago that was. Like so many other things in his
life, he'd all but forgotten what his father was like, or whether or not he ever had a
father in the first place. Oh, but he remembered his mother. That sweet smell of perfume
that always curled around his head like a warm blanket and the feel of warm skin against
his cheek when he hid in her arms from the terrors of the dark. All of it felt as if it
happened only yesterday, instead of so many years ago Charlamagne had lost count.
His mother knew something was different about her child from the
beginning. What others saw as a restless soul she understood as a spirit seeking guidance.
Being of Cajun and Indian heritage, Charlamagne's mother knew a thing or two about spirits
and such. Charlamagne remembered with fondness the times his mother took him by the hand
into the woods west of New Orleans to teach him the ways of the land. She taught her son
well, a fact attested to by Charlamagne's presence here in Cambridge so many years
afterward.
"Billy, my boy, I's come to get you," he whispered, his
voice surprisingly young for a body so old. No one could guess Charlamagne's real age, the
only hint of his ancient years were buried in his eyes. Those eyes, black as onyx and just
as shiny, spoke of years upon years of travel. If one looked deeply enough, they could spy
the scars that all those years bore upon Charlamagne's soul.
The day passed into night while he stood above the city, though it
came as little more than a darkening of the clouds that hung low in the sky. The passing
was significant to Charlamagne, though, it signified the passing of sanity into the realm
of terror. Billy was shrewd; shrewd and very, very lethal. It would be a long time before
Cambridge saw the bright light of day again, in more ways than one.
The wind shifted slightly, blowing up through the streets of
Cambridge. It carried upon it a smell so faint that, at first, Charlamagne almost didn't
catch it. It was the smell of blood, children's blood, a smell the old man had experienced
all too often before.
"You been busy," he said, his voice strained with hate.
"Too busy, if you ask me. That means I got to get busy myself." The old man took
a slow step toward town in the darkness with a sure foot. Though Billy was the priority
here, Charlamagne had other business to take care of. Somewhere down there someone was
dealing with Billy, and he had to take care of that person first. When the priest was
dead, then he could focus his attention on Billy first hand.
Whistling a tune through broken teeth, Charlamagne disappeared
from the hilltop into the darkness of the forest. This time he just knew it was going to
be different.
"Sheriff!" Sally called from the front of the
station. The tone of her voice told Ron she had the information he'd been waiting for
since noon. Sure enough, a moment later she walked into his office with a roll of paper
from the fax machine.
"Seems Al was right, after all," she said in a hushed
voice. "Don't you tell him I said that."
"I won't," Ron promised, taking the roll from Sally.
"What the hell did they send me, a book?"
"Just about. The Arkham police department said they have more
if we want it."
"This'll be fine for now." Ron scanned the parcel and
whistled. He had gotten more than he thought he'd get on such short notice. Police
reports, pictures, references, testimonies, it was all there. Strange a police department
would have this much stuff so readily available on a case over thirty years old.
"Where's Al, by the way?" he asked absently. He stood up
and walked to the coffee pot on the other side of his office. This was going to be an all
nighter.
"On patrol, said he wanted to check the damage from the
storm. Weather service says we ain't seen the last of the thunder." Sally watched Ron
return to his desk before continuing.
"Look, if you don't need me anymore, I'll be heading home.
John should have dinner ready by now, and I hate to disappoint him."
"Must be nice."
"It is. You need anything else?"
"No. I'll see you in the morning."
Before Sally could reply Ron was gone, his face buried deep in the
rolls of fax paper sent to him by Arkham Police Department. She shrugged her shoulders and
smiled. Moments later she was out the door and on her way home.
Ron whistled again. The material was thorough, he had enough in
front of him to learn what happened in Arkham in ‘62. His biggest problem now was to
figure out where to start. No better place to start but at the beginning. He unrolled the
paper and found the first record. Taking a sip of the hot coffee, he began to read.
On the April 15th, 1962, a four-year-old boy named Joshua Thomas
went missing during the night from his parent's home. He was an only child and the loss
drove his mother to the nut house. His father never gave up searching for Joshua, and as
far as the Arkham police knew, he was still searching today. In itself, the case was no
more strange than any other that crossed their desks at the time. Arkham was quite a large
town with a population of well over a hundred thousand. One child disappearing in the
night was a horrible thing, but not altogether uncommon.
It wasn't till three days later when a second child, this time a
six-year-old girl, went missing that the police started to wonder what was going on.
Still, no one wanted to raise any eyebrows, so the incident went pretty much hushed up.
One had to understand the history of a city like Arkham to know why this happened. Most of
the town's past was black as night, beginning with the witch hunts of the 1600s. Keziah
Mason originated from Arkham, an infamous witch whose horror still lives in modern horror
tales and movie theaters everywhere. It seemed that nothing right ever came of anything
happening in Arkham, nothing at all.
It was the third disappearance that set everything in motion. Five
days after Joshua disappeared, another little girl, this one a four-year-old named Sally
Ann, disappeared from her own backyard while having a tea party with her imaginary friend.
Her mother's testimony stated quite simply that one minute she was there and the next it
was if she'd never been.
The state authorities were called in on the case and a massive
search immediately took place. Unfortunately, the search turned up nothing. The search
lasted two days, ending abruptly when a storm slammed into the town from the sea. The
storm lasted five days, never relenting its hold for a second. And with the beginning of
the storm came word that a fourth child was now missing.
The police searched for a common thread in all this, for most had
now agreed that either a single person stood responsible for the kidnappings. The police
wondered to themselves if kidnapping was the only motive in this, but kept these beliefs
to themselves. It was the 1960s, the scourges which haunted Arkham since its beginning
were nothing now, nothing but monsters under the bed which disappeared when you turned on
the lights.
The only thing that remained a constant in all four cases was an
imaginary friend named Billy. The police had immediately followed up on this lead from the
beginning, but it played itself out rather quickly. Billy was just as the parents
described him, an imaginary friend. How could someone blame a figment of a child's
imagination for abduction. Oddly enough, the police never closed off this avenue of
investigation. Imaginary friends were one thing, the same imaginary friend down to the
shirt and pants shared by four children who lived in different parts of the city was quite
another.
Throughout the summer, eleven more children disappeared. With each
disappearance the city of Arkham died a little more, until there was nothing left of it
but a brittle shell of terror. It was one thing when disappearances were quiet,
uninvolved, as such things are in Arkham. But when fifteen children disappear, their
parents from all walks of life, from rich to poor, the horror was more blunt, more
terrifying than anything Arkham, as a whole, had ever experienced before.
Ron sat back from the papers and grabbed his mug of coffee. That
was when he noticed how bad his hands were shaking. God help him if the Arkham incident
and Shannon Peterson's disappearance were somehow connected. He took a drink of the bitter
liquid and continued to read.
As he remembered hearing, the chief of police and over half the
force was dismissed by summer's end. Not because they did something wrong, mind you, but
rather because the people of Arkham had to accuse someone. To this day no one knows what
happened to those poor children, or what exactly was the terror that visited Arkham that
stormy, horrible summer of '62.
Ron noticed three things about the report. First was the prominent
and repeated references to a Dr. Karl Mendleson of Miskatonic University. The reports
never specified what Mendleson was a doctor of, but it said he was consulted on a regular
basis by the chief of police near the end of the summer.
Second was the mention of a place called Dunwich, though the
reference was vague at best. A few of the police went there to search for clues, though
nothing was ever said about when they returned or what they found.
Last was an even more vague comment about a dilapidated old town
on the coast to the north between Arkham and Newburyport. The name of the town was oddly
missing from the police reports, though it was referenced as a home of odd folk best
left to the darkness of night.
Ron wrote down Mendleson's name on a pad of paper and the name of
the university below it. He doubted the doctor was still at Miskantonic 30 years later,
but it was worth a try. He had to start somewhere, the coincidences shared by the Arkham
case and his own were too uncanny. It was pure luck that he made the connection this early
in the case, a bit of luck Ron was willing to press as hard as he could.
The radio just outside Ron's office crackled to life, causing the
sheriff to jump and spill his coffee. This was not his day for coffee.
"Base, this is alpha two-three, come in." It was Al,
probably calling in to tell him nothing was going on. Ron wiped the coffee from the desk
with his hand onto the floor. When the desk was clean enough, he walked out to the radio.
"Base, this is alpha two-three, come in, over."
"This is base, keep your pants on."
"Is that you, sheriff?" Something clicked in Ron's
brain, something he didn't like. There was a tone in Al's voice, one that sent shivers up
and down Ron’s spine.
"Yeah, its me. What do you have?"
"It's happened again, sheriff."
"What do you mean?"
"A second kid’s gone missing."