The Prodigies of Monkfield Cabot by Michael Minnis Asenath Waite, daughter of the wizard Ephriam, is looking for a good man.  Jonathan Dismdale, dabbler in the occult, seeks knowledge and enlightenment.  The great Monkfield Cabot, medium extraordinaire, is perfectly happy to fulfill the wishes of both...if Jonathan's meddlesome friend can be removed first...

Edward Monkfield Cabot is no more. For what he did to Jonathan Dimsdale, and what else he would have done, he had to die. I shot him and his servant with a pistol. I would have killed Asenath Waite too, and burned Sutton Road Church to the ground, had not my work been interrupted and I forced to flee for my life.
    Dismiss me as a madman or fanatic. I have my reasons for killing Monkfield Cabot, and they are good reasons, though I do not expect anyone to believe or accept them. The man - renowned spiritualist and medium, speaker to the dead, or, as he liked to boast, "The man who baffled Houdini and frightened Crowley" - was, simply put, a fiend and a monster. Asenath is no better. I am certain that there are others who will agree with me, even if they find what I did reprehensible.
    And so I will tell you my story. Though at times it may seem fantastic, and even grotesque, it is all I have in my defense. Were Jon still among us, I am sure he would attest in my favor.
    It was autumn, 1927, when Monkfield Cabot arrived in Arkham. It was near the time of All-Hallows Eve, when leaves rattle like dry bones above the gabled roofs of ancient, rotting houses and the wind moans over the haunted landscape. There are those who find solace in the harvest season, rejoicing in its wild scarlet and gold beauty, and joyously await the bacchanalia of All-Hallows Eve. I am afraid I am not one of them. Arkham is too old, too steeped in witchcraft and rumor and bygone blood-sacrifice for such gaiety. As the days diminish, I grow anxious. Black branches clutch at the colorless sky, and I begin to fear the approach of night. Leaves fall and fly by their hundreds and then their thousands, choking the gutters and culverts, and so many are red, like blood.
    Monkfield Cabot came alone but for a driver, riding in a great black carriage drawn by a single white horse possessed of a slow, irregular walk. A milky cataract clouded one eye of the animal, giving it a devilish look, and a curious rune was painted upon its graying muzzle in black.
    The driver wore a shabby cap and a longshoreman's thick woolen sweater, both faded and of indeterminate color. He was dusky-skinned, possibly of Levantine or Mediterranean origin, sporting whiskers and a great handlebar mustache. He smoked foul-smelling cigarettes of Balkan tobacco. His age was, like his clothing, doubtful; he might have been anywhere between thirty and fifty. Little could be made of his heavily accented speech, and he did not speak often, or offer his name.
    Arkhamites were even more disturbed by Monkfield himself.
    The man was rumored to be of the Innsmouth Cabots, and in his flabby, slack, pockmarked features there was a certain resemblance between him and others of Innsmouth blood. To describe him as being homely was kind. Monkfield was strikingly ugly. Crouched like a toad upon his antique carriage, it was evident even then that he was tall, though some thought he might be hiding a humped back under an immense beaver coat and long scarf. Upon his head perched a stovepipe hat of the kind that has been out of fashion for over forty years. Amusing and a figure of fun at first, as he drew closer he became more and more disturbing. It was his face that was worst - the bulging watery eyes that seemed never to shut, the smallish cauliflower ears, the broad mouth framed by a thin straggling goatee, the rudiment of a nose mounted by pince-nez. But for his European beard and slashing eyebrows, he was quite bald. Nor was his skin entirely right - there was an unhealthy cast to it, and it was peeling, especially so upon his thick, clumsy hands.
    Arkhamites were not entirely unfamiliar with the doings and reputation of Edward Monkfield Cabot. His name had surfaced in furtive conversation more than once. Unlike others of Innsmouth blood, who preferred to linger in their crumbling, legend-haunted town, Monkfield was well traveled. He had been to the great cities of Europe before and after the War of 1914-18 - Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, as a traveling spiritualist and occultist of formidable reputation. I remark upon his reputation because no critic, crank, rational thinker or otherwise has been able to expose him as a charlatan, as are so many mediums. 'Ghosts' are proven to be no more than mirrors and double exposures of film. 'Ectoplasm' is too often revealed to be no more than fine cloth, sometimes treated with phosphorescent substances. Rapping and tapping, meanwhile, mysteriously subside when the medium is physically restrained.
    This was not the case of Monkfield Cabot. The Society for Psychical Research (S.P.R.) in London, as well as its American branch in Boston, subjected him to a series to tests. They blindfolded him, tied his hands, and placed him various cubicles and cells, all to no effect. Small objects rattled and slid about of their own volition, without outside influence. Footsteps were heard to advance, or recede, and then fall into ominous skin-prickling silence. Most sinister were the various taps, knocks, and occasional thunderous blows upon walls Monkfield could seemingly produce on command, and whose effect upon critics he savored with sardonic pleasure. Indeed, Scientific American offered a substantial reward to any who could disprove the man, and the challenge was accepted by none other than the great escape artist and psychic debunker himself, Harry Houdini. Monkfield received Houdini with ill-concealed distaste and was barely civil. To his own frustration, Houdini exposed no trickery on Monkfield's part. The greatest escape artist and foremost medium of the time later parted with sharp words between them. The former claimed the latter to still be a fraud, while Monkfield declared Houdini a "refugee from a poorer grade of sideshow entertainment, a lockpick uninitiated in the wider mysteries of the universe." Scientific American was forced to rescind its reward.
    Among darker social circles in Europe, particularly post-war France and Germany, Monkfield Cabot enjoyed great popularity. Indeed, he moved with ease among jaded occultists and effete eccentrics, equally comfortable in the company of bohemian or nobleman. They, in turn, whispered of his singular powers, and of his foreknowledge. Did he not foretell the sinking of the Titanic? Had he not known that the greatest of all wars would be born of an assassin's bullet and that revolution and anarchy would follow in the wake of slaughter? And had he not once predicted the ascension of a great city, long buried beneath the waves, a city seen in the dreams of artists and primitives?
    "Do you speak of Atlantis?" the pale women and nervous men of Paris and Berlin had asked.
    "I speak of a city a thousand times older and infinitely more terrible," was the smirking medium's only reply.
    He was said to extrude a particularly wispy and fine variety of ectoplasm during seances, from his mouth and under his fingernails. These spidery tendrils were described as being 'semi-solid' and soon dissolving into the air. Often they moved of their will, slithering across tables or reaching to the ceiling, so that Monkfield came to resemble a grotesque puppet, or a man caught in a gigantic web. Those of weaker natures had fainted at such displays.
    When once asked of the nature of his powers, Monkfield claimed the assistance of three ghosts, whom he named Hepzibah, Eurynome, and last and most terrible of the three, Orobas. His great-grandfather, Elijah Cabot of the Innsmouth Cabots, had bequeathed them to him - old Elijah, who himself had been a reputed sorcerer and master of the black arts. There was some wild talk of "white, shapeless silent things," seen in the ancient European graveyards Monkfield loved to frequent, and a young, impressionable Frenchwoman claimed to have been badly scratched on the leg by one of these 'things' when she drew too close. Periodicals such as La Monde and Italia were skeptical, of course, and mentioned pointedly the amount and potency of narcotics usually consumed by such so-called sophisticates.
    Aficionados of Monkfield went so far as to make wax phonograph recordings of some of the many seances he held in Europe after the war. They were made in secret and distributed among the more sinister of Europe's occult circles, as far abroad as Norway and Russia. A few managed to reach American shores. My late companion and fellow student, Jon Dimsdale, possessed such a recording. He did not elaborate on just how he came upon such a rare and controversial item, other than to say that it was a 'gift' from Asenath Waite of Crowninshield Manor. Knowing Jon's boyish passion for the strange, the outre, I grudgingly decided one night to set aside my Latin studies and listen with him to the recording.
    It was quite poor, to be honest, and initially consisted of random and very prosaic noises - a stifled cough, a woman's nervous laugh, muted conversation and a voice calling for quiet, please. This was followed by a seemingly interminable silence punctuated only by faint crackling, which bored me, but left Jon in a state of wide-eyed anticipation. He chewed on his upper lip and nearly non-existent blond mustache throughout the session - the same mustache that had earned him his hated nickname: Caterpillar.
    I was nearly ready to return to the dry mysteries of ubi est Gallia - when I heard what seemed to be a pattern of knocks. They were faint and slow, and I had to strain to hear them. Jon leaned forward, a look of wonder upon his lean, freckled face, his ear close to the phonograph's speaker. Then, there came a voice, peculiarly resonant and mellow. The tinny sound of the recording made it seem as if it were filtering down from another planet.
    "Three knocks and three knocks, and then one. And so is the sign of the seventh sun. Who is this who comes here?"
    "That's him!" Jon Dimsdale said, brimming with excitement. "That's Monkfield Cabot!"
    After a pause, there came another pattern of knocks: three of nine each, for a total of twenty-seven. Toward the end I was growing restless, and wondered at the audience's utter silence and complete patience. My thoughts were interrupted, however, by that weird voice again.
    "Three knocks times three...and three again. Thus is the number of the Crawling Chaos..."
    "What? Twenty-seven or twelve?" I asked, honestly puzzled.
    "No, Rodgers," Jon said, "three of nine. Nine hundred and ninety-nine, the number of forms taken by the Crawling Chaos! God's sake, man, don't you read anything besides Latin grammar texts?"
    With that he lit his favorite pipe, an enormous meerschaum monstrosity that made him seem silly rather than refined, a child playing at worldliness. He was quite young, only nineteen or so, but exceptionally well educated in his own rather odd fashion.
    I say this - and with no little apprehension, now that I know the truth - in light of his frequent studies involving a number of terrible old books and grimoires. Several of these titles can still be found on the shelves of the Miskatonic Library; the Unausprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt; the Book of Eibon; Thaumaturgical Prodigies in the New England Canaan; Frazer's The Golden Bough; and last of all, the lord and grandfather of all nightmares, the Necronomicon.
    (God only knows how many afternoons he spent in the drafty marble halls of the library's third floor, poring over crumbling books smelling faintly of dust and mildew. Did he not think it strange that someone so young should be obsessed with things so grim and terribly old, and wonder if he shouldn't be courting girls and cheering on the football team instead? I can still see him, sitting there, lips moving slightly as he pores over the crabbed script of madmen, and all is silence, but for the tick of the clock on the wall and the rush of wind in the eaves.)
    The phonograph record, ultimately, did little to persuade me of the powers of Edward Monkfield Cabot. He was a charlatan preying upon Europe's desperate and dispossessed. But Jonathan was convinced of the man's fabulous and fearsome reputation, and when Monkfield returned to Arkham that terrible autumn, Jonathan insisted we go and see him.
    Jonathan Dimsdale was the result of a strict rules-bound childhood and rather miserable adolescence. His parents were from Ipswich. I had met them once, during the Christmas break. Mrs. Dimsdale was quiet, spinsterish, and near-sighted, while Mr. Dimsdale had a booming voice and iron gray apostle's beard, and was seemingly never out of his embroidered waistcoat, or without his gold watch fob. He owned several factories, had held the rank of major in the Spanish-American War at a rather advanced age, and evidently never lost his taste for conflict. He had made a small fortune during the Great War, selling munitions to the Allies - in secret and illegally at first, it was rumored. He read the Bible, Business World and National Geographic, and little else. He wrote long-winded letters to the Boston Globe, exorciating the present generation's permissiveness, faithlessness and lack of morals. Jon thought him terribly bourgeois.
    What the elder Dimsdale made of his son, I do not know. He and Mrs. Dimsdale had had John late in life, so that they were more his grandparents than mother and father. Of his childhood I know little, but that he was always very smartly turned out in rather dated outfits, and consequentially became the victim of older, bigger boys. Adolescence proved an even greater trial. His peers took measure of his odd ideas and bookish habits and decided him a "twitch" - much too interested in the strange and perverse.
    By the age of eighteen, Jon was something of a budding occultist. He was versed in the works of Eliphas Levi and Cotton Mather. On a familial journey to Europe he had visited the Bibliotheque de'L Arsenal in Paris and the Koninklijke Bibliotek at The Hague in search of rare writings he could not find in America. He developed a passion for the more morbid of Goya's paintings. A modern Faust, he awaited the arrival of his Mephistopheles.
    The decision that he attend Miskatonic University was as much his parents' as his own. There was a growing rift between them, the self-styled dabbler in the arcane and the proper, starched Methodist couple. Mr. Dimsdale thought it would do the boy good to be among his peers - they would talk sense into him, and steer him toward the world of degrees and work and marriage. Miskatonic University was prestigious, distinguished, staid and respected, qualities appealing to Jon's father. To the old man's surprise, his son heartily endorsed the idea of attending the school, but for rather different reasons. Miskatonic University's collection of occult literature and writings was without rival in the northeastern states - perhaps in all of America - and Jon longed to look upon it and learn its secrets. There, in the small college beside the dark river, were the abandoned mysteries of the universe.
    Rumors and hearsay had long shadowed the arrival of Monkfield Cabot. It was said he had been driven out of Europe for some breach of etiquette or unspeakable crime. There were those who said he and his servant had been seen stealing corpses from a graveyard in Vienna. There were some that spoke of human sacrifices made in the mausoleums of Paris. And there were others who hinted of a séance gone horribly awry, of participants bitten and slashed by a frenzied thing.
    Last and most plausible of these tales place events in Germany, where Monkfield had a nasty encounter in Munich with the S.A., the Brownshirts, that band of Great War ex-soldiers, ex-officers, mercenaries and street trash posing as the defenders of all things Teutonic. No doubt they suspected him of being a Bolshevist. The stormtroopers were drunk and looking for trouble. In Monkfield they found it - two of the men were said to have been driven insane by something or things they could not describe. Monkfield was on trial for the better part of two years, imprisoned and later released, though some alluded that he escaped through the use of his own powers.
    He arrived in Boston not long after. From there, it is said, he journeyed to his ancestral home of Innsmouth, where he remained in solitude for a time. Nevertheless, whispers of his return rippled across the countryside, reaching as far away as Philadelphia and New York City. No one, however, would dare the rutted roads and pathless salt marshes of Innsmouth to seek Monkfield out. Nor did they ever question the few slouched, suspicious natives who occasionally arrived from there. Brash out-of-towners accosting such Innsmouth folk and asking after Monkfield's doings were invariably met with stony, staring silence.
    That summer there was news - Monkfield Cabot was abroad again. One hot shadowless September day, an ancient 1915 Ford truck came rattling and clattering up Dyer Street. It was the color of corrosion. It must have worked the docks, for from even where we sat, in the grass of the Town Square, the slight breeze brought the faint watery stink of fish. Jonathon, who had been worrying me with talk of nothing but Asenath Waite in between bites of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, stopped in mid-sentence to stare. I did as well, as I am sure many other Arkhamites did, in their own unobtrusive fashion. Anything from Innmsmouth bears watching.
    The truck came to a stop with a terrific grinding crunch, like a coffee can full of washers and nuts vigorously shaken. The driver was the swarthy servant I have mentioned, slouched behind the wheel, face half-hidden by his cap. A cigarette protruded from his mouth. From the other side of the truck emerged a hugely fat man bearing a hammer and several rolls of paper under a ham hock arm. He, like Monkfield, bore the Innsmouth look - splayed feet and hands, the wide staring colorless eyes, the flabby wattled face and curious shuffling walk. He wore stained overalls of tent-like proportions, blocky work boots, and a bowler. From door to door he waddled, Dyer to East Curwen Street. Evidently he was seeking permission to post bills. Judging by the curt and firm reactions of various shopkeepers, he would not receive any.
    "Come on," Jonathan said, "let's go see what he's got!"
    Before I could protest, Jon had darted across the street. In the process, he was nearly struck by a delivery truck from Krogers. The driver had a few choice words for him - words I am sure would have shocked his staid parents - but Jon hardly heard the man. Peterson, a local campus sports hero who fancied himself the Ivy League Greek god of Track and Field, shouted: "Don't squash the Caterpillar, old man!" The two pretty girls with him laughed, dainty hands over their mouths, in the proper way of their blueblood mothers.
    "Piss off, Peterson," I said, under my breath, and jogged across the street after Jon. Peterson was, after all, a senior. I was only a sophomore and Dimsdale a freshman.
    Jon was already talking to the fat man, whose expression was so dull and unblinking I wondered if he understood what was being said to him. Jon asked him why no one was allowing him to post his bills. The fat man shrugged. Jon asked him if he might see what he was posting. The fat man shrugged again, set his hammer down and handed Jon a rolled piece of paper. With an air of expectation both joyous and fearful, Jon unrolled the bill.
    BEHOLD THE PRODIGIES OF E. MONKFIELD CABOT!!! Read the first line in circus-style block lettering, and beneath, THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD!!!
    And beneath that: His Name Is Legend Throughout Europe, America, and the Orient! EDWARD MONKFIELD CABOT - medium without peer, psychic without rival, mouthpiece of the spirits!
    "Oh, for God's sake..." I sighed, my heart sagging. The old charlatan, rather than fade into obscurity, had come forth again to amaze the impressionable, stun the naïve, and relieve the wallet. "Jon, please, this is bullshit..."
    "It is not bullshit, Rodgers," Jon insisted, glaring at me with something close to fanaticism, or hate. The fat man watched us with that fishy wariness all Innsmouthers possess. Jon read more of the hyperbolic text. "'Boston, Ipswich, Kingsport and Arkham shall TREMBLE ANEW! Three ghosts shall speak and the dead will walk!' How much do you want for this? How much?"
    A third shrug from the fat man. "Take it," he said, and his frog-like voice sent a chill down my spine. It sounded as if he were chewing on suet. Jon thanked him, and the man gave an awkward tip of his dusty bowler, revealing a head largely bald. He returned to the Ford truck and spoke to the driver. One or twice they glanced at Jon and I - the former was too busy gloating over his prize to notice - and I found that I disliked the driver even more than his assistant. His eyes were small and very dark, enfolded in their creased, brown sockets like poisonous pearls. The cigarette worked from one of his mouth to the other. The fat man got into the truck. The driver then waved us over.
    Reluctantly, I followed Jon over to the truck. The smell of old fish and exhaust and foreign tobacco made my stomach flutter. The swarthy man's smile was utterly insincere.
    "You go see Mister Cabot?" His east European accent was coarse and thick. His cigarette bobbed on his lips.
    "I will, at least," Jonathan said. "I don't know if he intends to go or not. Where's he going to be? Manley Theatre? It doesn't say on the bill."
    "Theatre..." the man said, with a contemptuous wave of his pungent cigarette. Teee-a-turr... "Master Cabot is not sideshow. He know much. He know tings. He is not stupid cardsharp."
    The swarthy man then motioned Jon to come closer, and whispered into his ear. I glanced about nervously, hoping that none too many were watching this strange exchange. Speaking to anyone from Innsmouth is highly suspect. Actually, few of the townspeople paid any mind, except for a harried local merchant who emerged from his shop to complain of the smell of fish and demand that the truck be moved. The swarthy man did this, with a crunching of gears and a loud backfire that startled passersby. Up Curwen Street they went, leaving Jon and I behind.
    "What did he say to you?" I asked.
    "What do you care? You're the doubting Thomas, aren't you?" he asked in return with a clever smile. In the golden light of that cloudless autumn afternoon, he looked suddenly mysterious and wise, and not at all boyish. Disturbed by this vision, I suggested we return to Hell East - the East Dormitory - before Peterson or some other antagonist decided to start trouble, or take away his prize. Caterpillar Dismdale was not well liked on campus. In a buoyant mood, bill rolled under his arm, he agreed.
    "Wait until I tell Asenath and the others!" he exclaimed.
    Asenath Waite, like Monkfield Cabot, was from the decaying seaport of Innsmouth. She was a student of Medieval Metaphysics at the university, perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two years of age. I had met her once, at some of the more disreputable cafes in town, often in the company of Jon's friends, the university intelligentsia - a small Bohemian set consisting of poets, aesthetes, artists, writers, and the occasional self-proclaimed Bolshevik or anarchist. A few of them made the pretense of being magicians or occultists, but, as Jon told me, most of them were in reality quite harmless. They were content to haunt cafes, recite poetry of varying ability, and discuss post-war German Expressionist film.
    Asenath was an entirely different creature. She was a small thing, fine-boned and slim-hipped, with amazingly long graceful fingers that stalked and caressed and were rarely still. Her skin was flawless but curiously dusky, while her hair was very nearly charcoal in shade. The soft, low contralto of her voice spoke of a measured if somewhat coarse sensuality far deeper than the experience of most young men, though I thought it edged with an inner irony. Her eyes, while overlarge, were just as captivating - a summer's shade of green, deeply hooded and utterly knowing.
    It was easy to see why poor old Jonathon Dimsdale was taken with her. Many of the intelligentsia was just as smitten, the shocking reputation of her and her inner circle notwithstanding.
    He told me that Asenath could raise storms, and quell them too. He had seen her in the act, atop this very roof. She had drawn a circle, and angles, and less describable symbols in chalk upon the stone. She had then moved about, within and without these markings, infinitely careful, barefoot. A hushed, eerie ululation came from her all the while, and in changed in rhythm to the wind and darkening sky. It was a thin whine, a soft moan, and then what might be words. Lightning flickered, and then flashed brilliantly. Thunder rolled, great crackling that sent baffled Arkhamites running for shelter. Rain had come in a wet, blinding sheet, rain, beating down Asenath's dark hair so that it became like folded wings, soaking her dress through so that her form was almost shockingly evident.
    They had made love not long after, alone in our room. Or what passed for love, as Jon said. Asenath was greedy, her kisses so hard and driving it seemed to Jon as if she were unconsciously trying to force her way into him. She had no desire for tenderness or poetry; she was little different than the storm outside. She pushed her face into his chest, his belly, his throat, and to feel her teeth and nails gently working against the skin, was at once intensely erotic and very unnerving.
    And then, her flesh against his mouth, her fingers inside, and she whispered nastily into his ear: I could get in there, little Caterpillar. There are many ways in. But then there would be no room for you. Jon had asked, What in God's name are you talking about, Asenath? And Asenath had laughed and replied, If I told you, you would scream.
    They kissed again and again, and then she mounted him, nearly frantic with excitement or frustration. The narrow bed creaked in protest. Before long she began to gasp and moan. Jon was anxious someone might hear her, hoped the storm might conceal them. Then Asenath began to buck, her back arched and her wide eyes squeezed shut, as if she were in pain. Jon, near climax himself, had touched her face, and her eyes had flown open like shades...
    He became silent. The wind shrilled in my ears, and I wished to be back inside the dormitory. He drank the last of the whiskey, and slipped the flask back into his coat. As I have said, he never held his liquor well, despite his attempts to the contrary. He stifled a belch, and seemed oddly disturbed, considering what had happened. God only knew how many young men would have died for such a moment! Of course Asenath was going to say strange things - after all, she did have a reputation to maintain. Jon simply had had even less experience with women than with alcohol, and had probably been somewhat shocked by real unbridled unapologetic lust.
    This is what I said, anyway. Old Caterpillar simply shook his head. No, I didn't understand. Her eyes had flown open and they had rolled so far back into her head there was only whiteness, wet and blind. And yet she had seen him in that moment. This Jonathan Dimsdale knew, because Asenath had seized his wrists and pinned his arms over his head, even as her body convulsed in mindless release. Her wide eyes showing only dead blankness, she had seized his wrists and snarled through her small, clenched teeth in a voice very unlike her own, God damn you, be still!
    It was no ordinary traveling show Monkfield Cabot had planned for the people of Arkham that autumn. His reputation had precluded appearances at the Manley and elsewhere. Film, too, had come to into its own, replacing the vaudeville acts and theatre troupes of Monkfield's era, and I can imagine his confusion and dismay to learn that the masses preferred the company of the Little Tramp to that of the reputed 'eighth wonder of the world.'
    He was not to be outdone, however. He had his allies in Arkham. Despite near universal rejection of his posting campaign, word crept through the winding brick streets, from the stately neighborhoods of the more genteel districts to the squalid, noisy tenements of French Hill. Monkfield Cabot was coming. Monkfield Cabot would soon be here. Several of the more respectable institutions - among them the Rotary and the Daughters of the American Revolution - petitioned city council to have him barred from city limits, albeit unsuccessfully. An editorial likewise appeared in the Arkham Advertiser, calling into question Monkfield's 'reputed powers and psychic abilities.'
    And yet no one knew when or where in Arkham the man intended to put on his traveling show. That is, except for a few 'favored' individuals: Jonathan Dimsdale, Asenath Waite and her court.
    Jon was anxious. Now he knew he would be witness to the great marvels and shadowy wonders of the occult, he knew what was believed to be reality would be cast aside to reveal the grand truth of all things. I laughed and told him that he was really expecting too much of a seedy medium and his accomplices, alive or dead. Irritated, he challenged me to come with him. "Where?" I asked. "The Great Monkfield Cabot seems to be a little reticent on the subject. Where will we be going? And will Asenath be there?"
    Jon shrugged, stung by what he believed to be a joke. Lately he had been highly irritable, subject to dramatic shifts in attitude and mood. I knew the reason, though I kept to myself. Asenath Waite had become disinterested in him. Jon refused to say much of her reasons, other than that she had once made a cryptic reference in regard to his will and mind, both of which were unsatisfactory to her. I was pleased with this development, though I kept things to myself. Let Asenath find another man.
    For nearly two weeks he sulked and barely spoke to me. He ignored the customary teasing of his peers, and the pranks of the upper classmen. His attendance in class became erratic and his professors threatened him with failure. I knew what was afoot; he was back in his familiar haunts, among the numerous dusty shelves of the library, poring over antique riddles never meant for the eyes of men.
    That is where I found him one late rainy October afternoon, alone at one of the tables, leafing carefully through an old book. In the other hand, he copied the arcane formulae and bizarre woodcut diagrams into a notebook. It was quiet but for the patter of rain upon the windowpanes and the scratch of his pencil.
    He chewed on the pencil's eraser, reading the words silently, his lips moving slightly. I saw among his equipment a compass and ruler. Paper and crumpled wads of paper lay nearby.
    He startled when I tapped his shoulder.
    "Christ, Rodgers!" he hissed, dropping the pencil. "Don't sneak up on me like that! See? Now I have to start over again!"
    He crumpled up the obscure diagram, and, protractor in hand, began anew.
    I cleared my throat and said, "Jon...don't you think you should put this aside for a while? Your grades are suffering. You haven't written to your parents in two weeks. What's the point of all this nonsense, anyway?"
    "The 'point' of all this 'nonsense', Rodgers...is to prove to Asenath that she isn't the only game in town. That goes for Monkfield, too."
    He traced a smaller circle within a larger sphere.
    "What are you talking about, Jon?"
    "What I am saying is...is that I don't appreciate her behavior toward me, lately. The art gum eraser, please."
    I handed him the eraser. "Jon...what do you expect? She's an Innsmouth Waite!"
    "And your 'point' is..."
    "My point is that she's from Innsmouth, like Cabot, you idiot! You hear what they say about the people from there, don't you? Do you honestly think that just because her family is prominent and wealthy that she's any better than the rest of them?"
    "Pencil, please."
    "So are you still going to this thing?"
    "I don't know. Pencil, please."
    With a sigh, I handed him his pencil. He began to copy signs and stilted sigils into the diagram he had created. I tried to read some of the nonsense he was printing in large block letters:

VRDULA...AFORGOMON...KTULU FTHAGN...

    "If you don't believe in any of this, why are you trying to read it?" Jon asked.
    "Yes...why indeed?"
    Neither of us had heard her approach. Yet there she was behind us, in black, wearing gloves and a broad-brimmed black hat from which hung a fine veil of sheer cheesecloth - daughter of the wizard Ephriam, Asenath Waite. For a bizarre moment I wondered if she had come from a funeral, and then recalled her morbid tastes in dress and manner. She clutched several books against her breasts.
    "I thought I'd find you here, Jon. You're terribly predictable. And you must be Rodgers, yes? Jon's told me much about you."
    "He has?" I asked uncertainly. I liked neither her calculating eyes nor her sly half-smile.
    "Yes. Much," and that was the extent of her interest in me. She stood close to Jon, who feigned absorption in his work.
    "I'd like you to be there, Jonathan," she said. There was a faint note of authority in her invitation.
    "Would you?" Jon asked. Though his voice was firm, his hands trembled slightly as the protractor described another angle. Asenath placed her hand firmly on Jon's hand.
    "Don't ignore me, Jonathan."
    With a finger upon his chin, she gently turned his head about and upward until his face was only inches from her own veiled features.
    "Mister Cabot and I will be very disappointed if you don't come. I've told him about you and he wants to meet you. He's very impressed. He considers you quite the scholar."
    "He does?"
    Asenath offered her most delicious smile. "Oh, yes. Very much so." She glanced from side to side - I saw the sweet smile disappear and suddenly beheld Asenath's true face: coolly appraising, slyly cunning, great green eyes peering out from under their heavy lashes in a manner serpentine. Then it was gone, and she bent over Jon, until their faces were very close. She lifted the long black veil and pulled it over both their heads, so that when she kissed him I saw little but shadow. It was a small kiss, quickly broken. Asenath rose and the veil slipped from Jon's head, flowing like black water.
    "Perhaps you would like to come as well," she said to me.
    "Hmm...will Monkfield's 'ghosts' be there? I hear they're a bit shy around the skeptical."
    "Oh, yes. I'm sure they will be present."
    "Good. Should I bring my deck of cards and perform a few parlor tricks for you and Mister Cabot? Gut a chicken and read the entrails?"
    Asenath simply offered her deceptive smile again.
    "So...it's parlor tricks you like, then?" She asked. She set her books down upon the table. She calmly pulled one of her long gloves off.
    "This is a parlor trick my grandfather Ephriam taught me years ago. Watch closely. Jonathan, the compass, please."
    Reluctantly, Jon handed Asenath the compass. With a slight, superior smile, slender arm out, she turned her hand this way and that. Without a cry, or even a whimper, she took the sharp point of the compass and drove it through the palm of her hand. Blood ran down the instrument and fell in pattering droplets upon Jon's collected notes and papers. Jon hissed through clenched teeth and I uttered a shocked "Jesus!" in sympathy. Asenath, unperturbed, removed the compass point and let her blood fall serenely in what seemed a careful pattern. When she was done, she pulled her glove back on with neat, economical motions and gathered up her books. She began to walk away, but then turned and said to me:
    "Please come, the both of you, to the church on Sutton Road. Especially you, Rodgers. Perhaps we might readsome entrails, if you like..."
    She offered me a wink, scarcely visible through the veil, and went to the stairs. I watched her leave, and was still staring long after she was gone. It was then that I noticed something else: a sharp, bitter acidic taint to the air, as if of carbolic. Utterly baffled, I tried to discover its source, and realized that it came from Jon's papers. Where Asenath's blood had dripped, they were gently smoking, turning first to yellow and then to black. His crabbed, penciled script and painful diagrams disappeared into widening holes. I feared a fire, but there were no flames, only a hateful hissing. When the bizarre chemical reaction ceased - if one could call it that - I saw with a start that the burning and discoloration very closely followed the signs and angles and sigils so carefully copied by Jonathan Dimsdale.

Sutton Road Congregational Church stands alone to the west of Arkham, where ordered and prosperous farms give way to forest and hill. Indeed, most of the countryside around the church is deserted, given over to briar and bramble and witchgrass. One might stumble - literally - over the mossy foundations of a long-gone farmhouse, or a collapsing ivy-buried barn, or an anonymous stone marker among the weeds.
    It can be dimly spied from the Aylesbury Pike, among a stand of old, largely bare fir trees somewhat worse for the wind. No one has passed through its doors since the end of the Civil War. Faded gray in color with the passage of time and seasons, and half lost within the ivy endemic to the region, it is nonetheless remarkably well preserved. The smudged windows, but for a few panes, are unbroken. The roof is shorn of many of its shingles, but the steeple and its silent iron bell still stand. Nearby in an overgrown cemetery are thaw-cracked, barely legible marble headstones bearing ancient Arkham names: Keezar, Orne, Bishop, Curwen. None is dated any later than 1863, and many are much older. Opposite Sutton Road Church, across Aylesbury Pike, are the thick dark confines of Billington's Woods, where no one has lived for over a century.
    A local farmer claims the church grounds as his property, but he is an old man now who has little to do with this edge of his land. Of the church itself, he knows almost nothing. The congregation, like many Arkhamites, moved further west in later years. There was something about the country here that they had grown to dislike, something they felt had been there long before them, their farms and churches, and perhaps even Arkham itself. Crops did not fare as well here as elsewhere. Wells sunk into the stony soil went dry too soon. Animals were all too frequently stricken by various ailments, so that the sight of a cattle or sheep skull upon a stone fence or wooden post became commonplace warning. The sense of desolation was hardly relieved by the ceaseless burr of field crickets and cicadas in the long grass. Toward evening, the whippoorwills and marsh frogs would begin to pipe and cry, and unease soon gave way to dread, especially when the thick, somehow overgrown trees creaked and clicked in the wind like restless bones.
    Jonathan later received a letter from Asenath. We were told to wait at the corner of Boundary and Church Street for Monkfield's carriage. I knew why Asenath had chosen this place. It is a very old part of Arkham. Streetlights are few and far between, and much of Boundary Street stands in darkness when the sun sets. Beyond Boundary rises an ancient wooded graveyard of the Colonial period.
    We were to be there at 2:00 AM.
    Jon was somewhere between exhilaration and fear. Asenath's display had left us both shaken. We were afraid to go, and yet dreaded even more disobeying her letter. Jon was full of bravado. He collected his laborious notes, put on his cap (pulling it down low on his face so 'nobody would give us trouble') and a heavy winter coat. Into a pocket he thrust his flask. Into his mouth went the absurd pipe, and when I remarked that he looked like Sherlock Holmes' poor cousin, a slightly hysterical laugh escaped him.
    He did not laugh, however, when he saw what I intended to bring - a .32 revolver I had purchased just yesterday, with the better part of my savings. We had a brief, hushed argument over its necessity, but I refused to leave it behind. In the end I won the debate, and Jon lapsed into sullen silence. And so each lay on his bed, Jon in the top bunk, I in the bottom. We kept a tiny candle light lit on the dresser, and it threw a yellowish, uncertain light over the room. On the nightstand an alarm clock ticked away the endless minutes.
    The wind was fitful and gusting, and the old maple outside our window cast a sinuous danse macarbe of shadows on the wall. Eventually Jon asked me to close the curtain, which I did. A cold white sickle of October moon was out. Somewhere I heard the faint barking of a dog. I returned to my bed, unbuttoning my coat.
    Jon, in his nervousness, took pull after pull from his flask. I warned him not to become drunk. This sparked another tense, half-whispered argument, during which I threatened to let him go alone to Sutton Road Church.
    "I just might go there myself, then," he replied.
    "Good. Fine. Then maybe you and Asenath can compare notes before you meet the great Monkfield Cabot."
    "Oh, fuck Asenath," he said disdainfully.
    "You already did. Remember?"
    He became quiet again. Restless, I glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand. 1:28 AM, it read. Not long, now. No, the terrible moment would never arrive. Perhaps that was the worst moment of all, that stupefied waiting, when every sense seemed heightened to an unbearable degree while time crawled past with the infinite slowness of drugged nightmare.
    "Rodgers?" Jon asked.
    "Yes?"
    He chuckled uneasily. "I don't know about you, but I'm as scared as hell."
    "I know, Jon. So am I."
    Jon's fear had abated somewhat by the time we set forth from the university like fugitives. Patchy damp fog, come in from the river, had crept into the streets, aiding our efforts. We darted from building to tree like soldiers in No-Man's Land. But for the wind and the scrape of dead leaves, the silence was profound, disturbing. We avoided the cold glow of the streetlights. In one of the dormitories I saw a yellow square of light - an insomniac, whiling away the dead hours of the world.
    On Church Street we started west, passing darkened homes and closed shops. The day having been wet, dirty black water ran down street gutters and into the steaming sewer grates with a subterranean chuckle. The clustered buildings, with their narrow dark alleys, grew older and more decayed the further west we walked, 19th century brick and brownstone structures giving way to peaked roofs and bulls-eye windows. Passing the old abandoned West Church, the street turned to cobblestones set well over a hundred years ago.
    The fog began to unnerve me. It grew so thick that more than once we seemed to walk through a dimly lit tunnel, our footsteps curiously muffled. Then it would tatter and clear, revealing the horn of the moon bright against ghostly clouds. Ahead I discerned the rising ground of the old graveyard, and a chill skated down my spine at the thought of waiting beneath that slope.
    At the corner of Boundary and Church, we were in near-total darkness. Jon surprised me by striking up his lighter, which threw his face into haunting, acidic relief. I made him put it away.
    "Do you want somebody to see us?" I asked angrily.
    "For Christ's sake, Rodgers, nobody's awake. It's nearly two in the morning. I just wanted a look around."
    "So? What if someone does see us? You know what that means, don't you? Suspension. Possibly even expulsion, Jon."
    "Rodgers...let me get this straight...we're off to an abandoned church in the dead of night, by official invitation of a wizard's daughter...and you're worried about suspension?"
    We glared at each other, and then suppressed laughter escaped us like steam from a teapot. There was very little humor in it, understand, and a good deal of nervousness and fear. Gradually we gathered our wits, and passed the flask between us. The whiskey burned down my throat, but at least I was little less afraid. I heard the click of the lighter and suddenly smelled the sharp tang of tobacco; Jon had lit his ridiculous pipe, and puffed vigorously upon it.
    "Jon..."
    "Rodgers, please...what's wrong with-"
    "Shhh! Hear that?"
    "Hear what?"
    From out of the mist it came: the slow, unsteady clip of horse hooves, and the creak of wooden wheels. Then I saw the source of the sounds: Monkfield's black carriage, drawn by its single white half-blind horse. His swarthy, vaguely sinister servant perched like a raven in the driver's seat, a cigarette winking in the silhouette of his face. Beside him, however, was a bulky hunched figure I did not recognize, nor had any means of doing so - a hooded monkish robe the color of old blood covered it from head to foot, and it sat so, leaning upon its knees, that I could not peer within the cowl. Nor did I wish to see within, for what little I saw of its flesh seemed abnormally pale, like that of a mushroom. I wondered, was this wretch one of the more extreme members of Asenath's circle? An accomplice of Monkfield?
    The carriage came to a stop.
    "Come on," the driver said, "get in. Mister Monkfield not like vaiting."
    Jon stepped into the carriage, and I followed. We were not alone. On one side sat Asenath and Monkfield Cabot. We sat across from them.
    "Well," Monkfield said in his peculiar voice. His crude, bluish hands rested upon the sculpted head of a cane. "This is indeed a pleasure, Mister Dimsdale. I am very glad to meet you. And you must be Winston Rodgers. Shall I call you Winston?"
    "Rodgers, if you please."
    "Rodgers it is, then."
    Monkfield struck his cane twice on the floor. The carriage started forward, turning in a half-circle, back the way it had come. Asenath sat with her hands in her lap. She wore a fur coat. Her face was partially obscured by the veiled hat she favored, so that it was like a reflection in deep water. A fine silk choker was about her throat, and it was set with a small round red blood-drop of a stone. Remembering what had happened at the library, I found myself staring at it.
    She leaned toward Jonathan and placed her gloved hand on his knee. The cool green eyes flickered, full of nasty playfulness, and I thought again of water and moss and darkness.
    "I'm so glad you came, Jon. It will be more wonderful than you ever expected."
    Jon nodded mutely. Words had likewise deserted me. Monkfield and Asenath, absurdly familial, an urbane and grotesque uncle abroad with his sweetly wicked niece - I wondered if they were related.
    "Asenath has told me much of you," Monkfield said to Jon, tugging gently on his tangle of goatee. "And what I have heard has impressed me, which is why I requested your presence at our gathering. True, there are others I have met of great talent, or of vast erudition - of potential, if you will. Yet they always lacked something. Discipline, fortitude, imagination - they were ignorant of anything beyond their own limited world. You, Jonathan, to your credit, were different."
    Jon smiled and murmured "Thank you, Mister Cabot."
    "Pardon me, Mister Monkfield," I asked, and his watery eyes fixated on me with unpleasant attention. "But...who is that man riding alongside your driver? He's dressed...well...rather suspiciously."
    Monkfield surprised me with staccato laughter. He leveled his heavy wood cane at me. "An excellent question, Rodgers. The man you speak of has asked that he remain anonymous. I gave him my word. Originally he was to remain at the church with the others, but he insisted on accompanying me. He is an old friend of mine, and quite protective of me, given some of the difficulties I have encountered in my travels. He is somewhat oddly dressed, but then realize you are in the company of eccentrics."
    He laughed again. There was something of the consummate showman in his speech and gestures, and for an Innsmouther he was positively loquacious. Yet I trusted him not in the least. His rubbery smile put me ill at ease. How could Jon have ever fallen in with such people? I filched a sidelong glance out the small carriage window. The dark silent buildings of Arkham were long past. Outside lay still farm cottages and dead fields and the black bulk of woods: the landscape of October. I thought of the rumors I had heard of these parts, of poisoned ground and ghost-lights and goblins - what my old Uncle Noyes quaintly referred to as "ha'ants."
    "Asenath?" I asked.
    "Mmm?"
    "What do you want with Jon?"
    "Rodgers!"
    Asenath held up her hand - the same hand she had pierced with the compass, I uneasily noted.
    "This has nothing to do with what I want, Winston," she replied evenly. "This is what Jon wants. This is what they want. I am here merely to see that needs are met."
    I swallowed - it was too close in that creaking carriage, stale and airless as a crawlspace, a faint fishiness underlying all - and asked, "And just who are they, might I ask?"
    Monkfield Cabot gave my shoe a conspiratorial tap with his cane. "That is what we will soon discover, my good man!"
    There was a soft, flickering glow in the dusty windows of Sutton Road Congregational Church - many candles had been lit. It gave the church a baleful, almost feral countenance. The dying trees stood in muted yellowish relief, as did the ancient crumbling headstones and rank weeds. The grounds were deserted. Monkfield's carriage clattered to a halt, and in his morbid eagerness the medium hurried all outside into the cold night air.
    I kept close to Jon, and we took comfort in each other. Monkfield's assistant stepped clumsily from the carriage and lit another pungent cigarette. There were other scents and smells in the air as well: the slight muskiness of Asenath's perfume; the faint odor of mold and wood rot that the church exhaled.
    I fingered the pistol in my coat pocket.
    "Well...here we are," Asenath said. She took Jon by the hand and began to lead him away from me. She stared into the all-encompassing darkness. "It's lonely out here, isn't it?"
    "Yes, it is," Jon replied vaguely.
    "And why are you hanging back?" Asenath asked me, with a slight mocking smile. "You aren't afraid, are you?"
    "No," I replied, a little harshly, so that her smile grew, and she whispered something into Jon's ear.
    "You can join us later," she said. "Bring your cards, if you like."
    "What do you mean by later?"
    There was the flick of a horsewhip. The lumpish robed figure had taken the reins, and was leading the carriage behind Sutton Road Church. I caught a glimpse of deathly pale hands - nothing more.
    "A splendid night," Monkfield said with an air of satisfaction. "Come along, then."
    Asenath led Jon through the great double doors of the abandoned church, from which poured an eerie radiance. Monkfield remained behind. I started forward, too, when I felt a strong hand take me by the shoulder.
    It was Monkfield's servant. There was a flat, dead look in his eyes, a smoldering violence kept barely in check. The glowing tip of his cigarette winked orange. I pulled and he dug his fingers in harder. He smiled his insincere, stained grin, his teeth like those of a horse.
    "What are you doing?" I said, suddenly angry and afraid. I could not break his bear-trap grip.
    Monkfield seemed hardly concerned. "He is merely discharging his appointed task, Winston. Emile is very good at what he does. Should he believe someone poses a potential threat to me - or my work - he acts to circumvent it. In your case, this is probably true. You are a threat. A minor nuisance, actually, but to let you go your way would jeopardize what I have planned for the evening."
    He took a ponderous step forward, leaning on his cane. I was suddenly aware of his size and bulk. Alarmed, I tried desperately to tear away from my captor, who instead grasped my arm and twisted it behind my back. There was a white lightning-flare of agony and I cried out in pain. For a moment I thought my arm was dislocated, or broken. Sickly black spots bloomed before my eyes.
    "See? Just as I expected. I would not have allowed you to come along, my young Winston, but Asenath insisted. She has grown fond of you, despite your lack of breeding - almost as fond as she is of Jon."
    "What's going to happen to Jon?"
    He leaned in close to me. "That is for my familiars Hepzibah, Eurynome and Orobas to decide.
    "Take him to the cellar," Monkfield said to his servant, "and lock him in. Better yet, lock him in with Orobas. I'm sure the old bastard will enjoy the diversion.
    "He plays quite roughly, Winston. Bites and claws. Thoroughly nasty.
    "Gentlemen..."
    He tipped his antique hat and limped away.
    Monkfield's servant spun me roughly about, as if I was no more than a rag doll, wrenching my arm again. I groaned through gritted teeth and he snarled at me to, "be quiet!" He pushed me roughly through the tangled undergrowth and brambles, past the tombstones protruding from the black soil like the fingernails of a corpse. Our shadows described a weird tableau in the wan hellish glow of the church windows - like gargoyles they were, or capering demons.
    "You tink you smart, ya?" The man said with savage glee. He was very close, and the stink of his tobacco and sweat was overpowering. "You smart boy, right? Ha. You shit. You not-ting. Mister Monkfield, he snap his fingers, turn you inside out. He vistle, vite tings come, tear out your t'roat. No one make trouble for Mister Monkfield. No one."
    We rounded the corner of the church. Here there were no windows, and it was very dark. A decrepit, mossy bulkhead led to the cellar. From a back pocket Emile produced a large flashlight, and clicked its button. A shaft of wan light stabbed through the darkness.
    "Go on," Monkfield's servant said, giving me a rough push. "Get in dere." Trembling, I pulled on the rusting handles. They clattered open, releasing a furious cloud of bats. I cried out and the man laughed loudly. "Company, ya? No like bats, right? Smart boy. Now get down t'ose stairs! Move!"
    He pushed me toward the wet, crumbling steps. I stumbled down two of the stone risers and balked. He cursed me and grasped for my shoulder, but succeeded only in gripping a handful of my jacket. I twisted and threw an elbow into his belly. The air left him with a stunned grunt. I grappled with him, clumsily, and we both lost our balance on the narrow steps and fell, tumbling, to land in a heap upon the cellar floor. The flashlight struck the ground and rolled away.
    With a terrific growl, Emile struggled to his feet and threw me off of him. His strength astounded me: I was little more than a rag doll. I crashed into a stack of cobwebbed, dusty wooden crates, bringing them down upon me in an avalanche of moldering invoices, papers and ledgers.
    "I teach you, you little son-of-bitch!" he said.
    Heavy footsteps, coming toward me. In the dim radiance of the flashlight I saw that he had pushed the sleeves of his heavy sweater up on his knotty arms, his hands doubled into fists. He would beat me senseless, probably kill me if he could. I stumbled to my feet. He rushed toward me, and I threw an old chair into his path. He grasped for me and I tore away, pulling down a shelf laden with rusty cans with a tremendous smash of old nails and screws. I was desperate not to let him close with me. Nevertheless, he did - I threw a punch, connected only with empty air, and he sent his fist crashing into my ear.
    The pain was the exquisite touch of a white-hot wire, bursting through my skull. For a moment I was certain my eardrum was ruptured. I fell into a wreckage of rotting lumber, shelves, and stacked moldy newspapers, which tumbled heavily upon me. In my mind I heard my mother's gentle, chiding voice: You watch out for rusty nails, young man!
    "Ya, I teach you goot! How you like dat? You like, smart boy? YOU LIKE?" Emile was completely berserk. He grasped me by the lapels of my coat, shaking me the way a terrier shakes a rat. Then he threw me again, into the stone wall of the cellar. He doubled me over with a blow to the gut, his fist hard as a stone. I collapsed into a ball on the damp, slick floor, coughing and dry-heaving helplessly. I was horribly close to blacking out. The left side of my face was numb. My eardrum rang faintly and made any number of odd, atonal short-wave radio-like noises. I waited for the killing blow. Oddly, inexplicably, I heard the rasp of a match. Emile's sweaty face was briefly framed in crude woodcut relief, and then it was gone, and the end of a cigarette winked at me like a cycloptic eye.
    He squatted beside me, and blew stinking smoke into my face.
    "Not so goot now, eh, smart boy?" he asked, now quiet and reasonable. "Ha. You no give me trouble. I break your balls, you do. I bite man's lip off, once, in Germany. Brownshirt.
    "'Now, vat Emile do?' you vunder. Emile do nut-ting. Now is Oro-boss turn. He much nastier than me. He maybe pull your arms off like fly. He maybe put your eyes out. Nasty Oro-boss! He vill like you, I tink. He like liveliness."
    He patted me roughly on the head and chuckled. Absurdly, he began to hum a popular tune to himself as he walked away: Ain't She Sweet. He retrieved his flashlight, tossed it into the air, caught it, and was every bit the man satisfied with a job well done.
    I shot him, once, in the back, as he was ascending the stairs.
    He made hardly a sound, a startled huh! Then he toppled backward, landing heavily on the floor. Both flashlight and cigarette went out, stranding me in near-total darkness.
    I sat there, shaking with such violence that the gun nearly dropped from my fingers. My hands tingled and burned, as if they had fallen asleep. I swallowed repeatedly, tasting acid in the back of my throat, my pulse throbbing in my head like the toll of a gigantic bell. I had killed a man. A police officer would later remark on the accuracy of my shot, which had struck Emile in the back of the neck, severing his spine.
    I staggered toward the cellar stairs, careful to avoid Emile's body. I took the flashlight, gave it a shake. To my relief, it still worked. A sudden creature of instinct and nerve endings, my surroundings became almost painfully lucid: the mingled bittersweet stink of cordite and blood, the miasma of mold and earth, the cold grain of stone beneath my fingertips as I painfully climbed up the stairs. Thin idiot ringing filled my head. And there were other sounds, which hovered at the threshold of audibility: discordant monotonous piping from somewhere, muted unintelligible voices speaking in parts, the solemn incantations of ritual.
    Cold October wind struck my face when I reached the top of the stairs. I breathed deeply of it, clearing my wind, wincing at the pain in my belly. I rose to my feet. The mist had slipped away into the hollows and gullies. The moon, though thin, was bright. The night sky glittered with pitiless alien beauty. I cautiously aimed the flashlight about the overgrown yard.
    That was when I saw him - the robed one, beneath one of the dying trees, a rusty-colored shapeless lump. Was he asleep? Had he seen me? The shape provided no clue, that is, until I started forward. Without shout or warning, he came at me, charging through the dead weeds.
    I would have shot him, then and there, but for one thing: profound shock. It is difficult to describe, but the manner of its movement was at once absurd, grotesque, and dimly familiar. I had seen such a gait before on a visit to the Boston zoo: the four-limbed, shambling run of an agitated ape, the awkward yet swift gallop of a creature bearing longer arms than legs. Yet the ape had snorted and snarled, whereas this...this thing came on with the unnerving silence of a ghost ship, but for the whicker and flap of its ruddy robe. I caught once more the gleam of sickly whitish flesh, of what I thought were claws or talons, and decided I had seen enough. I stumbled back down the steps, slammed shut the bulkhead doors and barred them from the inside. Whatever was outside - Orobas - struck the doors with a terrific crash, rattling them in their frames. They buckled, yet held. An utter cacophony of banging, shaking, and scratching came from the opposite side. Yet not once did I hear words, or even animal growls of frustration. There were only savage blows and the sense of inhuman, insane fury on the opposite side.
    Panicked, I searched frantically for another way out of the cellar. The flashlight failed time and time again, which honed my terror to a fine edge, while the assault outside was now a steady succession of heavy blows, like that of a battering ram. So whatever was after me was not entirely stupid. Wood began to crack and splinter. I stumbled through the dusty, cobweb-shrouded wreckage of the cellar.
    There, by a woodpile nearly turned to stone with age, was a staircase thick with ancient webs. Arms out, I plunged into the fibrous mass, and was soon a frightened phantom shrouded in trailing tatters. The risers groaned beneath my weight, and I dreaded one of them should give way.
    The door at top was unlocked. I found myself in a deserted storage room. Scattered across the floor were articles of furniture beneath mildewed sheets and rotting wooden crates stamped: SUTTON ROAD CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 1848. In the far corner, beside the single solidly boarded window, were a chair and ancient rolltop desk, frosted with dust. The chair I wedged firmly beneath the knob of the door I had entered, though I doubted it would hold for long. Webs hung from the ceiling like rotted lace. The hardwood floor protested every step I took, while the wind moaned and whistled in the eaves. I went to the door - which was missing its knob - on the opposite wall, and, heart pounding, pressed my good ear against it.
    I heard only the whine of the wind initially, the sly creaks, complaints and weird groans of the old church settling as night grew old. Yet I heard something else, too. There was a peculiar solemn voice, and it was answered periodically by another of almost unearthly equanimity: Monkfield Cabot and Asenath Waite. Pistol in hand, swallowing the enormous knot in my throat, I opened the door. The flashlight's beam revealed a cobweb-festooned hall of peeling wallpaper, worm-eaten wood, and the gleam of many small red eyes. The rats fled my light, and the sight of their pinkish hairless tails nauseated me. Voices, however, came forth from the shadows, rather than retreat into them.
    "...and so it is thus," Monkfield Cabot intoned, "that from out of the Void comes the Messenger; the Crawling Chaos; the One who is the Voice of Azathoth, who bubbles and blasphemes at the center of the Universe..."
    "And so it is thus," Asenath replied in a chilling monotone.
    "An offering shall be made to them, the Outer Gods, and the Faithful rewarded..."
    "Verily, I come forth..."
    "Does the Sorceress bring the gift They desire?"
    "...wise is the Sorceress who brings the gift of Flesh in her left hand, and wise is the sacrifice of Blood in her right," Asenath said, "for the Messenger of the Outer Gods would take offense at neglect of either, and turn her over to his Servants, who delight in exquisite Tortures of the Mind and Body...Ia! All hail the Black Goat of the Woods..."
    Gun in hand, I crept forward. Diffuse light came from beneath a closed door. Monkfield spoke again, his tone sepulchral.
    "...And whoever should dare call forth the Outer Gods, who should dare awaken Cthulhu in his Tomb, or Glaaki beyond his Wall, or Yog-Sothoth beyond all Space and Time...let them know then the terror of the universe. Let him behold Kadath in the Cold Waste and the Plateau of Leng, eater of corpses..."
    I tried the doorknob, very slowly. It was unlocked. Asenath spoke again, her voice dead and droning. My skin crawled to hear it.
    "...So will it be. I will go to Them, who live beyond the ken of Man. Wizard-daughter firstborn, child of the Third Oath of Dagon, I will bring both Flesh and Blood. From throat to foot I will walk in Crimson..."
    "And so it is thus..."
    It is quite difficult for me recollect what occurred next. Perhaps that is the only solace left to me now, alone in this prison cell, alone in this haunted universe.
    Almost simultaneously, there came three noises, which nearly paralyzed me with fear. The first came from behind me, from the cluttered storage room - the sound of a rattling doorknob, and then the fearsome blows again. My second barrier halted my pursuer, who had broken into the cellar, but the chair would quickly give way.
    Then came a startled, muffled yell, followed by a horrible choked-off scream.
    "Be still, damn you!" Asenath said.
    "Jon!" I cried, and threw my shoulder against the door.
    It burst open and I nearly crashed headlong into a row of dusty pews. Yet how can I describe what I saw next? A how can such things be allowed to be? The nave of Sutton Road Congregational Church burned with strangely scented candles of black, lavender and burgundy. They sat upon the pews, beneath the cobwebbed windows, and along the walls in all their shadowy darkling beauty. After the darkness of the cellar and hallway, I was almost blinded by their soft radiance. I blinked like an owl.
    "Well," said a languid voice, "Monkfield was right. You do lack breeding, Rodgers."
    It was Asenath. She stood in the aisle, alone. Something was very wrong with her, she was slick, glistening wetly, and with a painful, winded gasp I realized what it was - blood, gore up to her elbows, up to her throat, the front of her dress saturated with it. The red horror of blood.
    I aimed the revolver at her.
    "Jon! Where is he? What have you done with him?"
    The pistol did little to disturb her trance-like state.
    Another voice, from the pulpit. It was Monkfield. "It is not a matter of what we have done, my young man, but what must be done."
    I rounded a pew, coming toward him.
    "I'll show you what must be done!"
    And I stopped cold, unable to scream, unable to breathe. All thought fled me, all sanity, my mind left shriveled and naked at the sight before me.
    Jonathan Dimsdale, as I had dreaded, was dead, and he had died far more horribly than I could ever imagined. A shallow pool of spreading blood lay about the pulpit. Monkfield was standing within it, seemingly oblivious. Yet this was not the worst I saw. Jon's mangled, blood-dripping body was held above the gore-slick floor by what I first thought to be two very large, crouching men in whitish-gray robes. They were not men. What I had taken to their robes were, in reality, their flesh - lumpish, gelatinous, slippery and slug-like. What I thought must be hoods were in fact, their heads - vague and misshapen, devoid of all sensory organs but for a mass of small pinkish tentacles at the end might be a toad-like snout. They sat like toads. They had wide toad mouths full of teeth, by which they held Jon's corpse in balance...one by his feet...and the other by his frightfully mauled head.
    He had been slit open like a hog.
    "Go on, Rodgers" Asenath said. "Look within. Read the entrails, as you said you would. Then I will read yours."
    Monkfield came toward me, limping. His expression was one of patient yet profound disapproval.
    "Winston Rodgers," he said. "From nuisance to major hindrance in one evening...you little bastard. Congratulations. How you managed to escape both Emile and Orobas is beyond me. I will be greatly annoyed if either is harmed. But no matter. Now give me your gun, or I will turn Hepzibah and Eurynome on you. Moonbeasts are quite unharmed by such weapons - as far as they are concerned, your bullets are mere insect bites."
    "Perhaps," I said in a small, strangely calm voice. "But I doubt the same applies to you."
    I shot Monkfield Cabot twice in the chest. He fell backward, bringing the pulpit down upon himself with a terrific crash.
    There was a heavy, wet thud. The moonbeasts had dropped Jon's poor, mutilated body. The small tentacles upon their snouts writhed as if in agitation, and they bared their bloody teeth at me. They seemed to swell, gathering mass. I backed away from them, and one rushed forward and swiped savagely at my leg, and I fired again. The bullet did no more than create a small bloodless puckered hole in its rudimentary head. I groaned in terror.
    Asenath laughed. "A bit out of your depth, Rodgers?"
    I skirted the rows of candlelit pews, away from the horrible things. Asenath watched my plight with avid interest. I pointed the revolver at her.
    "We'll see who's out of their depth, you miserable bitch!"
    Monkfield Cabot had been a gifted medium and psychic; but Asenath Waite was a sorceress, and much more powerful. She smiled sweetly, and raised her bloody arms with the grand sweeping gesture of a maestro. On either side of the nave, one after the other, the windows burst inward in great coughs of shattered glass. The wind howled in, the multitude of candles swiftly died out.
    I yelled in fear, and covering my face as well as I could, I staggered out of that cursed place, down the hall, stumbling and gibbering. Out the double doors and down the stone steps I fell. I staggered to my feet and began to run. I plunged through the midnight landscape, across empty fields and culverts and past abandoned farmhouses that stared like skulls. I dimly recollect laughing madly to myself at some points, and at others running in silent, blind animal panic. Brambles tore at my face and hands.
    Only once did I look back upon Sutton Road Church, when I crossed the Aylesbury Pike. That was a mistake worthy of Lot's wife.
    Three bulging, lumpish things were bounding after me, noiselessly, like ghosts and yet unlike ghosts - Hepzibah, Eurynome, and last of all, Orobas, come to tear me to quivering pieces.
    It was then I began to scream.
    The next morning I was discovered wandering near Billington's Woods, alone, torn and scratched by thorns, wild-eyed, gibbering silently to myself in a hushed voice lest something hear me. I had lost the revolver at some point. What good was it anyway?
    The man who discovered me was Thomas H. Morgan, of 254 Hill Street, Arkham. Driving an antique Model-T, he had been on his way to visit his half-brother, who lives in Dean's Corners. I vaguely recognized him as being assistant physician to the university doctor. Doubtless my wild appearance shocked him, but he herded me into his vehicle, and threw his heavy coat about my shoulders.
    It was a cold, cruelly bright day.
    He was gruff, stuffy, and somewhat pompous, but well meaning. He prodded me gently with questions on our way to St. Mary's Hospital, but I only sat in shivering silence. Coming down Boundary Street, we passed the old colonial graveyard to our right, and I looked away. I was treated at the hospital for exhaustion, exposure, cuts and contusions. Further attempts were made to question me, but I had lapsed into a catatonic state.
    Concern over Jon's disappearance grew. I tried to explain to the police what happened, but when they took matters into investigation, they returned to declare me, Winston Rodgers, one of the more notable mass-murderers in Arkham's history. The way in which I disposed of my late friend Jonathan Dimsdale was described as being 'especially depraved, a killer in the style of Jack-the-Ripper,' by The New York Times. The Boston Globe referred to me as a 'monster...less than human.' If they only knew what monsters did dwell among them, they might not be so smug.
    And so now I sit in a padded cell of Arkham Sanitarium, which is on Derby Street. Hardly a block down runs Curwen, and there is the Town Square, where Jon and I once sat eating sandwiches and discussing the mysteries of the universe ages ago. Isn't that wonderfully ironic?
    The good men who run the institution consider themselves enlightened, and prefer treatment over restraint...but I am judged to be terribly dangerous, and am kept in a straitjacket most of the time. I have prescribed various drugs and medicines. They have experimented with hydrotherapy. I have been subjected to terrible electrical shocks. All of which is to no avail. They hope to cure me, but I fear time is running out.
    There is a little window of thick glass in the door of my cell. It is rather like looking through the bottom of a bottle: faces bleed and distort, yet remain recognizable. Beneath that is a slot, through which come my bland, safe meals on their trays.
    One night I was awakened by a stealthy, suspicious sound. The hinged slot is rusting, and it squeaks when opened. I awakened - I sleep very lightly these days - and stared in abject, numb horror. A mass of short pinkish tentacles, like a hideous writhing bouquet, had pulled themselves through the slot. Nor was that all. Boneless as an octopus or slug, a swelling bulge of gray-white slippery flesh began to squeeze and squelch through the narrow opening. It withdrew with shocking speed when I began to shriek, and was gone long before the nurses arrived. The psychiatrists later puzzled over my cries: It's here! It's Orobas! It's here!
    Now I cannot sleep. I must stay awake. But they have drugs...
    But not all is death and darkness. I have received word of Asenath Waite.
    As I had once wished, she has found another man. His name is Edward Derby.
    I hope she does well by him.

Copyright © 1997 Michael Minnis. All Rights Reserved.