The Lovecraft Squad: Dreaming Page 4

  The metal box squawked, startling Elwood. He raised it to his mouth, punched the talk button, said, “Alpha-One. Go.”

  “Alpha-Two. Nothing here.” That was O’Hara, stationed a few blocks away. “You got anything?”

  “Not yet. Alpha-Three?”

  Jefferson’s voice crackled through the tinny speaker. “Alpha-Three. No Olde Fellowes action in the meadow.”

  “Alpha-One, over and out.”

  He dropped the walkie-talkie back into a pocket and eyed the vacant lot across the street. He knew this had once been the location of a house that was notorious even by Arkham standards: The “Witch House,” home of Keziah Mason, a 17th-century crone who was said to have fled Salem and taken up residence here, still practicing black arts and accompanied by a rodent familiar called “Brown Jenkin.” Elwood’s own father, Frank Sr., had even lived in the house briefly when still a college student, until a friend of his named Walter Gilman had died there under mysterious circumstances. All of those still renting rooms in the large, three-story abode had removed themselves at that point and the house had been demolished not long thereafter.

  Elwood had always known that his family’s association with Arkham—where his father had continued as a professor of mathematics at Miskatonic University until he’d died of a massive stroke two years ago—was why he’d been recruited by Hoover himself for the FBI’s Human Protection League, but that didn’t make him feel any better about being positioned here now.

  Even though the Witch House had been torn down more than thirty years ago (the demolition had revealed a wealth of hidden horrors, including human bones, occult books, and unidentifiable antique relics), its presence still infected the area. The barren plot of land had been claimed by the government when the last owner had simply stopped paying taxes on it, but it had never been re-built on. It had once been surrounded by a tall wooden fence, but even that structure had long ago succumbed to a rot that seemed to seep up from the poisoned soil. Tall, bent weeds, all of a uniform gray-brown color, sprouted from the ground, which was spongy underfoot. Haze often seemed to overhang the area, even when the rest of Arkham was clear; although animals avoided cutting across the lot, late-night drunks staggering past sobered up quickly when they heard something big moving among the weeds, or claimed to glimpse glowing eyes that didn’t follow the proportions of any creature they could name.

  The HPL had kept tabs on this place for decades, just as they had many other eldritch areas in old Arkham and elsewhere across America. These were all prime sites for Olde Fellowes activity. One of the League’s informants in the town often mentioned strange sightings in the area, but the stories were usually too vague to merit following up. Not this last one, though: Eddie Polonsky, a red-nosed senior citizen who supplemented his monthly Social Security with HPL snitch money that bought him better (or at least more) whiskey, had told them that something big was brewing.

  “A lotta folk hereabouts are reportin’ some damned odd dreams lately,” he’d said to Elwood, over drinks in a dockside tavern as Eddie glanced side-to-side anxiously. “Mitch Atcheson, he swore he walked into the old Witch House one night, that it was still standin’. In the dream, he climbed them stairs, went all the way up to the top floor where that one feller had died, found a pile of bones there—and they was human bones. When he waked in the mornin’, he found somethin’ in his own hand, and saw he was clutchin’ a finger-bone. Shook him up so much he walked over to the place as soon as he got dressed, but ’course he found nothin’ but weeds and that cursed soft earth.”

  Elwood had waved over another drink for Polonsky before asking, “That’s weird, sure, Eddie, but you called me and said you had something worth a c-note, and that ain’t it.”

  “No, that ain’t it.” Eddie waited until the fresh drinks appeared, took a healthy slug of alcohol, wiped his mouth with his flannel shirt sleeve, and said, “I seen somethin’ there myself last night.”

  “What? What did you see?”

  Eddie’s rheumy eyes had creased, his voice grown even huskier. “I was goin’ by the place myself last night just about 1:00 A.M.—I don’t like to go that way late, y’know, but I’d had a bit too much and got turned around. Wound up there, tried to go by it fast, but . . . damned if I didn’t see . . .”

  He broke off, looking away. Elwood leaned forward and nudged his arm, trying to bring him back. “What, Eddie? Tell me.”

  “It weren’t on the ground, no, but floating overhead, above that blasted place . . . big, like a train car, but round, or rather, like it was made up of lots of round things. It had these arms—no, not arms, more like them things on a squid . . .”

  A chill passed through Elwood. “Tentacles?”

  “Right! Like tentacles. And eyes—too goddamned many eyes. I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep a scream in, just turned and ran, expectin’ to feel it behind me any second, feel one’a them tentacle-things wrap ’round my throat. . . . But I made it home, I did. Haven’t slept since.”

  Elwood believed it. He’d never encountered a shoggoth himself, but he’d studied case files and talked to other agents who had. Even in incorporeal dream form, these soldiers of the Armies of the Night were terrifying.

  He pulled out his wallet, slid a hundred to Eddie, and on second thought added a twenty. The old man grabbed the bills, crumpled them and stuffed them into a pocket, tossed back the last of his drink, and got to his feet. “Thanks, Mr. Elwood.”

  Eddie started to stagger off, but Elwood stood up and caught his arm. “Eddie,” he said, speaking softly, “take my advice and use that money to leave Arkham. At least for a while.”

  Eddie yanked his arm free, nodded, and fled.

  Elwood had taken the information back to the League’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and now here he was, thirty hours later, standing outside the lot that had once held Arkham’s Witch House. His frequent partner, O’Hara, was stationed with their car two blocks away, while Special Agent Jefferson stood guard at a fetid, swamp-like meadow just below Hangman’s Brook, following his own lead.

  Jefferson was one of the youngest members of the Human Protection League, a 23-year-old kid who’d graduated at the top of his class last year with a psychology degree from St. Francis in Brooklyn; he was smart as a whip and cool under pressure, but it had still taken Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s order last year to hire more minority agents to get the young black man into the HPL.

  Herbert Jefferson had only been with the Lovecraft Squad for a few months, but had already developed a network of his own informants, some of whom had come to distrust the FBI’s Caucasian agents. Jefferson’s Arkham informant, a Cuban drug addict named César Garcia, had told him a startlingly similar story about encountering a many-armed monster floating above the meadow.

  Wishing he’d brought a thermos of hot coffee with him, Elwood was shrugging his shoulders against the New England October chill when he noticed something curious: the low mist hanging above the vacant lot across the street had grown. It gathered height as he watched, and grew dense, almost glowing beneath the vague illumination of the street-lamps. It thickened, broadened . . . and then just as quickly evaporated into tatters.

  The lot was no longer vacant.

  Elwood’s pulse quickened as he blinked in shock. A house stood there now: three stories, of antiquated design and rattletrap upkeep. Shingles were missing from the roof, paint peeled from the sides, the posts holding up the front entryway were splintering, and a gabled garret jutted from one side like an angry pustule.

  He knew this house; he knew it from photos he’d seen in case files, and from descriptions his father had provided. It was the Witch House of Keziah Mason, who’d been found guilty of practicing black magic three centuries before, but had vanished from her jail cell after inscribing arcane symbols on the walls. This was the Witch House that had been torn down thirty-two years ago, now standing solid, if not exactly sturdy, before him.

  Elwood stood for a few seconds, ears straining, stomach
clenched, waiting. When nothing more happened, he pulled the walkie-talkie out. “This is Alpha-One, I’ve got a sighting. So far the situation is quiet . . .”

  O’Hara called back, “Roger, Alpha-One. On my way.”

  Elwood pocketed the handset, lifted the shotgun, and started across the street cautiously.

  He reached the property line, where the moldering remains of the wooden fence jutted up like broken teeth. The house was completely dark and silent, no light or sound, not so much as a creaking shutter. Elwood thought the front door was wide open, although it showed up only as a blacker black within the front entry.

  He was debating his options—enter the house or stay outside to observe?—when a noise drew his gaze upward, a noise that combined an atonal reed instrument with bubbling tar. Something was taking shape against the hazy, starless night sky, something big, made of room-sized globules that meshed and shifted and roiled, while long, wavering arms and dozens of eyes swam in the restless surface.

  Elwood felt the bottom drop out of his gut. He had to will his knees to hold him up. He knew what he was looking at, even though he’d only read about them, or heard the secondhand accounts from witnesses (the few that had survived, that is), some of whom were so frightened years after the encounter that they’d turned pale just from the retelling.

  Shoggoth. The word alone felt alien, ominous, fecund with dread. Shoggoths ranked just below the elder entities themselves in the Great Old Ones, the worst of their monstrous legionnaires.

  And this one was moving toward Elwood.

  He knew the shotgun would do little to damage it, but he also knew it would catch him if he tried to run. If he were going to die here, on this ugly, abandoned corner of Arkham, then he would at least try to inflict some harm on his killer. He raised the shotgun, pumped it, waited as the nightmarish thing drew closer . . .

  It stopped. And then it retreated.

  Elwood stood like a statue, still gripping the shotgun, his finger sweaty around the trigger. As the shoggoth drifted up and away from him, he lowered the gun and waited, watching.

  Something came into view now near the shoggoth, looming above the Witch House—a spire, extending far overhead, made of some pearlescent substance Elwood couldn’t name. It must have been hundreds of feet high; it was featureless except at the top, where a walkway or platform encircled it.

  A man stood on the platform. Although it was too far up for Elwood to see him clearly, the shoggoth was plainly heading for him. Elwood felt dread for the lone figure.

  “Is that somebody standing up there?”

  Elwood started, almost lifting the shotgun, but relaxed when he saw it was O’Hara; he hadn’t heard his partner join him. “I think so . . .”

  Both men went silent as they watched the alien monstrosity float upward until it seemed level with the man, who stood his ground. The man and the shoggoth regarded each other; Elwood wondered if they were somehow communicating.

  O’Hara asked, “Why isn’t it attacking him?”

  “I don’t know. It almost seems like it’s . . . respecting him.”

  Before the scene could advance any further, it faded away, like the memory of a dream in morning light. The Witch House followed. Within seconds, Elwood and O’Hara stood in an empty plot of land, surrounded by nothing but trash, weeds, and rot.

  “What in God’s name was all that?” O’Hara whispered.

  Elwood turned to go. “I don’t know, but whatever it was, it’s over now. I could use some food and a warm bed.”

  By the time they reached the car, Elwood knew what he had to do come morning. He didn’t like dealing with Hoover—he found the Big Boss repulsive, truthfully—but Director Nathan Brady and the FBI’s head honcho needed to hear about what they’d discovered tonight:

  There was a new player in the game.

  II

  Bobby leaned back in his desk chair. After a moment of consideration, he unbuttoned and rolled up his sleeves. He wasn’t especially hot, but he knew it would irk J. Edgar Hoover. And he did enjoy irking Hoover.

  It was probably the only thing about dealing with the FBI director that he did enjoy. As the attorney general, Robert Kennedy was J. Edgar Hoover’s superior, but Hoover treated him like an unruly student in a Catholic high school. Bobby’s brother John had given up dealing with Hoover altogether; he only “spoke” to the director via an appointed liaison. During his first year in the White House, President Kennedy had invited Hoover in for a few talks, but had finally grown weary of Hoover’s superiority and condescension. They both knew that the only reason Kennedy had kept the aging bureaucrat on as the director of the FBI was that Hoover had files (including surveillance tape) on John’s long-ago affair with Inga Arvad, a one-time acquaintance of Hitler who was still suspected of having been a Nazi spy back when the Third Reich had been dabbling in occult objects and research.

  Bobby was in his office now, awaiting Hoover’s arrival, because of the talk he’d had with his brother this morning. His brother rarely asked him to chat outside—it always meant something especially serious. Jack had waited until they were strolling through the Rose Garden before he’d said, “Sorry, but I don’t trust Hoover anymore—I wouldn’t put it past the son-of-a-bitch to have bugged the Oval Office.”

  “I don’t know, Jack,” Bobby answered. “I mean, sure, the Justice Department, we all know he’s got his fingers in that pie, but . . . the president’s office?”

  “You’re probably right. Bet you’ll be glad when that new FBI building is finished and you get the Justice building to yourself.”

  Bobby smirked. “Won’t stop Hoover from bugging anyone.” They walked in silence for a minute; then Bobby asked, “Jack, what’s this about? Is Hoover giving you some trouble?”

  “No, not exactly. It’s . . . well, those dreams I told you about, you know—when I first came to the White House two years ago . . . ?”

  Bobby nodded. “The ones where you’re high in the air, and you see a big shining city . . . ?”

  “Right. Well, they’ve gotten . . . stranger. And last night I had one where I was standing on this balcony made of some kind of greenish rock, and in the dream I leaned down and poked at it, and a little piece came away. Then, when I woke up this morning . . . I had this.” Jack pulled his right hand from his pocket and extended it, palm up, to Bobby. Bobby looked down and saw a quarter-sized piece of rock the hue and translucency of green sea foam. He touched it with a fingertip, expecting it to be warm from Jack’s hand, but it was smooth and cool, almost cold. “What the hell is it?”

  “I don’t know. But, Bobby, there was something else, some kind of big . . . creature that floated up right next to me. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen, or imagined—it had dozens of eyes, and tentacles like it should be underwater, and at first I thought it wanted to kill me, but then it changed, and somehow I knew it had judged me and accepted me. And that was when I woke up, or . . . I don’t know, this may sound crazy, but maybe I didn’t wake up so much as came back.”

  Bobby stopped and eyed his brother, weighing the possibilities. He knew that Jack was taking a lot of medication for his back pain—was this some kind of overdose hallucination? A stress reaction? But his brother had started having these dreams as soon as they’d arrived in Washington, so that was nothing new. And there was the green stone—what was it, and where had Jack gotten it from? “Well, I can see why you might not have wanted Hoover to hear this . . .”

  Jack stopped strolling and turned to his brother, his expression serious. “But I think Hoover has something to do with this.”

  “Sorry, I’m not following you . . .”

  “We need to know more about what he’s been doing with that clandestine organization he’s got buried down there under the Washington Monument. He’s never been straight with us about that.”

  Bobby shrugged. “There may not be much to be straight about. It all sounds pretty crackpot. I mean, we’ve got the Russians trying to out-muscle us, organized crime breathi
ng down our necks, a civil rights movement that’s shaking everything up . . . do Hoover’s little fantasies about monsters or little green men really matter next to all that?”

  “What if . . .” Jack trailed off, waited, finally went on. “What if he’s actually onto something, though?”

  “Oh, come on . . .”

  “Look, I know how crazy this all sounds, but just do me this favor: find out everything you can about what’s going on with the Human Protection League, will you?”

  Bobby clapped a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Okay. I’ll dig a little deeper.”

  That meeting had been this morning. Now Bobby awaited Hoover’s arrival, planning what he’d say. In a sunny corner of the office, his big dog, Brumus, snorted in his sleep, as if he too were having troubling dreams.

  Bobby’s secretary announced the FBI director’s arrival, and a few seconds later Hoover, as impeccably dressed as ever, entered. As he and Bobby shook hands, Bobby saw Hoover’s eyes crease in disapproval at his rolled-up sleeves, and he suppressed a smile.

  “Thank you for coming on such short notice,” Bobby began.

  “Of course.”

  Bobby decided to cut to the chase. He thrust the stone Jack had given him across the desk, setting it before Hoover. “Ever seen anything like that?”

  For a second, he thought he saw Hoover’s eyes widen, but the director’s flicker of astonishment was quickly clamped down by his steely composure. He picked the stone up, held it to the sunlight, tossed it once in his palm before replacing it on the desk. “Jade, maybe? Where did you get it?”