Feeders from Within

by Peter J. Evans

To Mum and Dad.

I loved being able to tell you that I was starting this one.

I wish you had still been here to see me finish.

© 2013 by Fantasy Flight Publishing, Inc.

All rights reserved. 

Ebook edition published in 2013.

Cover illustration by Stephen Somers.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

eISBN: 978-1-61661-718-9

Arkham Horror, Feeders from Within, all associated characters, character names, and distinctive likenesses thereof, Fantasy Flight Games, and the FFG logo are trademarks or registered trademarks owned by Fantasy Flight Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

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Prologue: A Soldier’s Tale

In the days before the summer of 1916, death had never troubled Mark Harrigan.

It had always been with him, of course. No boy grows up on the wrong side of Harrisburg without seeing its work now and then. There were the school friends who went home coughing and never returned, and the aunt who caught a fever in the fall and simply vanished, her name never spoken again. There was the time he saw policemen pulling something off a railroad track, something that was the size of a man but no longer the shape, although his mother would not let him close enough to see what it was.

Sometimes he would be awoken by noises—shouts, screams, dull pops—that his father told him were probably gunshots. Lives ended on those nights, certainly. It was a distant thing, though, an abstract. Something that happened far away, to other people.

Even when he grew up and joined the army, following the path forged by his older brother before him, death remained aloof. Harrigan’s time was filled with training, rather than fighting, with ill-fitting uniforms and misfiring rifles, not the blood and howls of combat. The war in Europe was far away, east across the sea, a muddied nightmare glimpsed only in newspapers and barroom gossip. When Harrigan’s regiment finally shipped out, it took him south instead.

It was as though death were something half-seen under dark water, vast and cool and uninterested, occasionally brushing past him while he swam and never quite choosing to cross his path.

But all things must end, especially innocence.

And so it was that in the summer of 1916, in the foothills of the Sierra Madres, with the sun setting and the water gone and the Villistas closing in, that death stepped out of the shadows and presented itself to Mark Harrigan in all its glory and its myriad ways.

After that, it never really left his side.

* * *

The water was foul—warm and stale and gritty with trail dust. Harrigan tipped his canteen back, the hot metal neck pressed against his lips, and let the last few drops trickle into his mouth.

There wasn’t really enough to swallow, and the aluminum taste of it made him want to spit. He lowered the canteen and glared at it for a second or two, regretting even opening it. Drinking that sour, sand-laden dribble had been worse than not drinking at all.

He screwed the cap carefully back onto the canteen, clipped it onto his webbing, and picked up his rifle.

It was getting harder to see. The light had been fading for an hour, the burning haze of day darkening into a leaden, looming wall of sullen evening heat. The jumbled boulders that made up his hiding place had grown sharp and black against the sky.

Soon, when the sun was fully set, the temperature would start to dip. At the moment, though, Harrigan’s only respite from the heat was the lack of direct sunlight on his skin. Even the shadowed rocks around him were radiating; he was crouching with his back against a car-sized slab of weathered sandstone, and he could feel the warmth of it clear through the fabric of his uniform.

The air smelled bitter, a dusty tang of heat and dry sand and sweat.

There was a scuffle of boots on rock, and Harrigan saw Farrow scrambling up to join him. “You got water?”

Farrow seldom used a word he didn’t have to, and when he did speak it was in that weird, flat, sing-song accent that Harrigan could never quite place. Whawder. Louisiana by way of the Bronx was how Harrigan thought of it. Not that Farrow ever talked about home. He didn’t talk about anything very much, which was probably why Harrigan liked him.

Harrigan rolled the back of his skull against the boulder. “Gone.”

Their voices were low, little more than murmurs.

“Saw you drinking.” Farrow shrugged and dropped down onto a nearby rock, and began working at the laces of his left shoe. “Guess you made it last longest.”

“You’re all out?”

“Gave mine to Lisetti.”

“Big of you.”

“Okay, sold.” Farrow grinned. “Half-pack of Camels. Want one?”

Harrigan shook his head again. He wanted a drink, not a cigarette.

Farrow finally yanked the shoe free, upended it, and poured out a stream of grey sand. “Would you look at that.”

“How’d you even get your foot in there?”

“Wondered why I was getting taller.” Farrow shoved his foot back into the shoe, working the edge of his canvas legging over the top. “On the one side.”

The sand was fine. Dust rose from the place Farrow had poured it, grey rising into shadow. There was no color in the world anymore. On the other side of the mountains the sunset would be a riot of reds, but here the hills were as stark and silvery as a photograph. Even the soldiers themselves were grey, their skin and hair and the olive drab of their uniforms painted with dust. They had marched out of camp that morning like men. Now they were ghosts, hiding in the dark.

They had been hiding for half a day now, waiting for the Villistas at the bottom of the hill to leave.

There were six men among the rocks, including Harrigan and Farrow: Barratt the redhead was there, and Walinski, who could see in the dark, and Lisetti, who could barely see at all. And then there was Orton, platoon sergeant and the reason Harrigan was probably going to die, thirsty and tired and only twenty-two years old, in these nameless hills.

The seventh man, Tyler, was gone.

Harrigan tightened his grip on the rifle. It was a Springfield, standard US Infantry issue, long and heavy with a bent forward sight and a decade of hard use written in scratches on the stock. Holding it made him feel a little better, but some of the Villistas had Mausers. Opinion back at camp was divided over which weapon wrought more damage on the human frame, but Harrigan didn’t want to find out. “Will they be looking for us?”

“Mexicans?”

“No, our boys. The rest of the platoon.”

Farrow shrugged again. “Tomorrow, maybe.” He seemed oddly at ease, almost relaxed. His face was smooth, unlined, even after months of Mexican sunlight grinding into it, but something about him made Harrigan think he was the older of the two of them by several years.

Then Farrow, in a quiet, amused voice, said: “Atten-shun.”

Harrigan sighed. Sergeant Orton was climbing up to join them.

The boulder Harrigan sat against was one of hundreds arranged in heaps and piles along the base of the ridge. The hill, one of the undulating foothills that ringed the Sierra Madre mountains, began as a long, shallow slope of scrub-infested gravel before rearing suddenly into a rippling wall of sandstone. And at the base of that wall, dislodged by centuries of daylight, sun, and nighttime frost and their own unspeakable weight, lay the rocks, scattered randomly like the results of a Titan’s tantrum.

There were places where the ridge itself had given way, and it was here that Orton’s band of survivors had taken shelter. It was a great scoop ripped from the sandstone wall, ringed with boulders. It was a good place to hide and, if things went badly, an almost impregnable firebase.

It was also a trap.

Orton was making his way up from the bottom of the scoop, where he had been arguing over a map with Barratt and Walinski. He was older than Harrigan by a decade or so, his narrow, intense face split by a handlebar mustache that didn’t suit him. Unlike the rest of the men, he still wore his hat. His last sign of authority, thought Harrigan sourly.

The sergeant clambered up onto the shelf of ground behind the boulders, and gave Harrigan a cold look. “You’re facing the wrong way, mister.”

“Sorry, Sergeant.” Harrigan straightened a little against the rock. “Things were quiet, so I took a break.”

“And if the Villistas had decided to walk up behind you while you two were shooting the breeze?” He nodded to one side of the boulder, where it shelved away into a pile of smaller stones. “You’re supposed to be on watch. So watch.”

“Sir.” Harrigan slid over to the low point, and very carefully peered over the rubble.

Below him, the hillside was a wide, unbroken plain of pebbles and scrub bushes and brittle, twisted trees. It broke apart two hundred yards downslope, fracturing into the rocky edge of a dry riverbed, and it was there that the Villistas clustered, pale still figures in the gloom. Most sat, although he could see a few sentries standing with their rifles cradled. Their voices drifted up to him in waves as the hot desert air shifted; laughter and harsh Spanish one moment, silence the next, then laughter again.

As Harrigan watched, light grew in the midst of one of the clusters of men, and a ragged cheer came to him across the scrub. He cursed under his breath and moved back behind the boulder. “They’re lighting fires.”

“Damn.” Orton shrank back a little. “All right. Damn. Damn.”

“We’re in trouble now,” Farrow whispered.

Harrigan gave him a nudge with his boot, not all that gently. “What now, Sergeant?”

“Be quiet and let me think.”

Orton was a New England man, with an accent that dripped Old Money. Rumor had it that Orton’s father had somehow bought him a quick path through officer training, because no one could fathom how he had gotten through it otherwise. Another rumor said that he had joined the regiment as a colonel, and that Orton’s career in the army had been in reverse since the day it began. So far, he’d made it all the way down to sergeant.

As a rule, Harrigan didn’t hold with rumors. But he didn’t consider Orton a good soldier, either. “Sir, we don’t have much choice. If they’re here until morning, so are we.”

Orton’s eyes narrowed. “So they can ready themselves for a dawn attack?”

“Not their bag, from what I hear,” drawled Farrow. “Hell, they probably don’t even know where we are.”

“Of course they know!”

Harrigan’s next words were whispered. Orton was getting loud, and while he knew better than to tell the man to quiet himself, he could at least try to lead by example. “Sir, I think we’d know about it if they did.”

“We’ve got the advantage of cover and high ground.”

“Don’t mean much against five-to-one,” Farrow muttered.

Orton shook his head. “No, we can’t take the risk. There has to be a way out of here. Somewhere. Over the ridge. I’m sure I saw some kind of pass while we were coming in.” He patted Harrigan’s shoulder. “See? Up there, past that tower.”

Harrigan squinted. All he could see was a rough chimney of stone silhouetted against the metal sky. “I’m not with you, sir.”

“Well, you’ll not see it from here. It’s dark enough for you to climb up without being spotted.”

Harrigan stared at him. “Climb?”

“Come on, Sarge,” hissed Farrow. “Scooting around up there? He’ll break his damn neck.”

“No he won’t, Farrow, because you’ll be there to hold his hand.” Orton nodded up to the tower. “Off you go. And if you run into any sombreros, try to deal with them quietly.”

* * *

There were almost seven thousand American troops in Mexico. They had been there since March, when General John Pershing had led two great columns of men across the border in the hunt for the revolutionary known as Pancho Villa.

Harrigan didn’t know much about Villa. There were stories, of course; wild tales of the attack on a US Cavalry regiment stationed over the border at Camp Furlong, and of the brutal assault that Villa had perpetrated on the town of Columbus nearby. Reports in the more sensationalist newspapers described a vast army of wild Mexican peasant-soldiers slaughtering at will on both sides of the border, of destroyed trains and murdered Americans, stolen guns and fires that lit the desert night. Other sources, while not playing down the vileness of Villa’s crimes, cited a more political backdrop to the violence, claiming the Villistas as a product of Mexico’s continual cycle of revolution and counter-revolution. The Huerta dictatorship was to blame, or the Carranza government, or a host of other names that Harrigan could barely pronounce, let alone remember.

It didn’t matter. He was just a soldier, and soldiers do what their generals tell them to do. So Mark Harrigan of E Company, 17th Infantry Brigade, had crossed the border in a rattling, sweltering horse-drawn truck, and marched across great deserts and into tiny pueblos and through dry river valleys in pursuit of this thieving, murdering, raping hero of the poor and downtrodden Mexican people.

It made no sense to him, and he said so in the letters he wrote home to his father and to a small, honey-haired woman who lived on the good side of Harrisburg. The woman’s name was Sophie; Harrigan had told no one about her, because he thought it might jinx things if he did. And Harrigan very much wanted to see Sophie again the next time he got home.

Although the chances of that had been diminishing all day. This, more than the actual and real threat of death, was what Harrigan blamed Orton for most.

It had been Orton’s idea, after all, that he should take six men ahead of the rest of the platoon that morning. Perhaps Lieutenant Brady should have refused Orton, but he’d been marching fifty soldiers along the bottom of a rocky gorge at the time, and someone had spotted Villista observers up on the high rocks. Quite sensibly, Brady hadn’t wanted to lead his men into a killing ground, so he’d allowed Orton to pick his team and make sure the way was clear.

Orton had had other ideas, though. As soon as he had been out of sight of the rest of the platoon, he had led the squad into a narrow rising pass and out of the gorge, in the hopes of catching the observers unawares and “bagging himself a sombrero or two.”

There were, sadly for Orton and his dreams of glory, considerably more than one or two sombreros waiting for him at the other end of the pass.

* * *

There was a kind of pathway behind Orton’s tower and his rocky cover but, as Harrigan was disappointed to discover, it did not lead through the ridge and away from the Villistas. It ended, after a short rise through heaps of lethal-looking rubble, at a hole in the ground.

Harrigan peered inside. The hole was a cave mouth, maybe five feet high, worn into the sandstone of the ridge and fringed with a tangle of rock and wiry scrub bushes. The darkness within seemed impenetrable. “Orton’s not going to like this.”

“Careful there, boy.” Farrow was hanging back, his rifle cradled, looking at the hole with undisguised distaste. “Rattlers.”

“Someone’s been here.” Harrigan nudged the gritty sand with the toe of his shoe. “There’s footprints.”

“Don’t look much like feet to me.”

Harrigan had to agree. Even in the fading light the prints seemed odd, more like the impression of some elongated hoof than a boot. “Animal?”

“Could be. I seen Mexicans get a burro up where you wouldn’t believe.”

Harrigan suppressed a shudder. Although he’d never admit it to Farrow, he didn’t like being around the cave mouth at all. There was something repellent about it, unwholesome. Even though its edges were dry, it looked like a wound.

And the footprints, if that’s what they were, unnerved him. He gripped the Springfield tighter. “Let’s get back.”

As he spoke, a tiny fire tumbled out of the twilight and landed on his left shoulder.

Harrigan gave an involuntary yelp and jerked away from the flame. It was a match, still lit. He saw it spin into the scrub, then looked up into the eyes of the man who had thrown it.

They noticed each other at almost the same moment. The other man was crouching among the rocks above the path. He must have thought himself alone, and stopped to rest and light the cigarette that was still dangling from his lips.

He was dressed in peasant clothes, not the uniform of Villa’s elite Dorados, and he could have passed for a local farmhand if it hadn’t been for the bandolier crossing his chest and the long Mauser rifle in his hands. Harrigan was close enough to see the man’s eyes, dark and clear, opening round in shock, to hear him draw his breath in to shout.

He whipped the rifle around and tugged on the trigger.

The Springfield went off with a loud, high snapping sound, and bucked in his hands. Half the Mexican’s head vanished. The rest of him slumped to his knees, lolled forward, and dropped the Mauser. Harrigan watched the gun skitter back down the rocks toward him before fetching up in a creosote bush.

He chambered another round, the bolt slick and quiet, and then let the barrel down. His ears were still ringing slightly from the noise of the shot.

He felt strange. A cold detachment was settling on him, gentle as snow; a feeling of something passing, and a larger and darker thing taking its place. This, he thought to himself, quite calmly, is what it feels like to kill a man.

“Damn, boy,” breathed Farrow. “Cat’s out of the bag now.”

The Mexican was still on his knees, propped horribly up on his boulder. Beyond him was open hillside, the rocks on which he had crouched forming a high wall between the path and the slope. Harrigan shook himself, and climbed up close to the dead man, peering over the top of the rock and trying to ignore the steady, pulsing drip from the Mexican’s opened skull.

Past the rocks and their oozing trophy, the entire force of Villistas was advancing toward him.

He saw one man drop to his knee and raise a rifle. There was a spark in the half-light, the scream of a bullet caroming off the rock next to him followed instantly by the solid bellow of the Mauser, the bullet outrunning the sound of its own firing. The order of it seemed wrong to Harrigan—flash, impact, then sound—but no one had ever shot at him before.

He raised the Springfield and fired back, spinning the man clear around.

There was a scrambling commotion behind him. He jumped down from the rock to see Barratt and Lisetti clambering up the pass toward him.

Barratt was closer, and he saw the Mexican first. He gaped. “Jesus.”

“Him or us,” shrugged Farrow.

“How did he get up there?”

“I don’t know, but there might be more with him.” Harrigan ducked as another bullet whined off the rocks. His calm was melting away. Later, he suspected, it would be replaced by something altogether less pleasant, but he didn’t have time to consider that now. “Look, you two stay up here in case he had buddies. We’ll try to stop Orton doing anything stupid.”

“Good luck,” said Lisetti, eyes wide behind his spectacles. “He’s going crazy down there.”

“That’s what he’s best at.”

* * *

Orton didn’t carry a rifle. When Harrigan skidded back down into the scoop, he was aiming his Colt automatic at the advancing revolutionaries, but he wasn’t firing. The range was still too long for pistols.

“Damn it, Farrow!” he snarled. “Are you trying to get us all killed?”

Harrigan threw a glance at Farrow, saw his grin shine white in the gloom. “It was me, Sergeant. Villista scout, up on the path.”

Bullets slapped into the sandstone, followed by a dull crackle from the hillside. “So there is a pass.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t go anywhere.”

“Typical,” muttered Walinski. He had his rifle wedged between two slabs of stone, and was aiming carefully along the iron sights. There was a flash and an echoing snap as he fired. “Goodnight.”

Orton chuckled. “Nice shot, Walinski. At this rate we’ll be able to drive them back.”

“Sorry, boss. I’m almost out.”

“And there might be more Villistas flanking us, sir.” Harrigan found a spot to rest his rifle, started hunting for a target. “We left Lisetti and Barratt guarding the pass, but I doubt the boy I shot was on his own.”

The soldiers had been lucky that morning—the two forces had stumbled on one another up above the gorge quite by accident, and so the brief, startled exchange of gunfire had been panicked and ineffectual. Orton’s squad had managed to scatter into the scrub, and eventually regroup halfway close to the hill.

Apart from Tyler, of course. Nobody knew what had happened to him.

This time, there would be no such escape. The Villistas had hunted them all day, then made camp and waited while Orton had his squad cower in the scoop. Now they had either split their force to form an enfilading party, or been joined by a second force. Neither thought gave Harrigan much comfort.

The firing was continuous now—the deep booms of the Mausers and the harsh high cracks of the Springfields. Harrigan knew it couldn’t continue for long. He had two shots left in his Springfield, another two stripper clips ready when they were gone. Twelve bullets didn’t feel like much.

A shot sounded from his left, echoing down into the scoop. Harrigan cursed under his breath, fired off two of his own, sending a Villista rolling back down the hill, then pushed a new clip into the Springfield by feel alone. “Barratt? Are they up there?”

There was no answer, just a second shot. And then a high, piercing scream ripped down through the sweltering air.

Harrigan whirled at the sound of it, rifle aimed up the pass. “Lisetti!”

Orton aimed his Colt and fired once. A cry answered him from the dark, quite far away. “They’re bloody flanking us!”

“That didn’t sound like—”

“Just get up there!” Orton fired again, then turned away from the slope. “All of you, up behind the tower! There has to be some way past these devils!”

For a moment Harrigan stood frozen, his heart yammering jaggedly in his chest, breath frozen in his throat. The scream hadn’t sounded like a man surprised by the enemy, or even the result of a wound. It was a sound of fear, of pure, primal terror. He had never heard anything quite like it.

The unease he had felt around the cave mouth flooded him, rooting him to the spot.

Walinski was already past him, Orton on his heels. Farrow slapped his shoulder, hard. “Move your ass, boy!”

Harrigan tried to speak, but fear had done a better job of stealing his words than thirst. Instead, against all his instincts, he raised his rifle and charged up into the pass.

Later, he would realize that he had never expected to reach the top. He had been sure that a volley of Villista gunfire would meet him halfway, opening him as he had opened the Mexican on the boulder. But there were no shots, no revolutionaries. When he got past the rubble there was no movement at all.

Orton and Walinski were standing, quite still, staring toward the cave.

He pushed past them, searching the high rocks, seeing nothing except the kneeling corpse. “Where are they?”

Walinski was shaking his head. “What the hell…”

Distantly, Harrigan could hear shouts and the crackle of gunfire. Footsteps, sliding to a halt as Farrow joined them. And something else, closer, that he could not immediately identify; a faint, dusty scuffling, and the thick, rhythmic thud of fluid spilling onto hot sand.

Then he saw what Walinski was looking at.

His attention had been high, on the boulders flanking the pass. He had not seen the discarded rifle lying in the dirt, or the body lying just to one side of the cave mouth, sprawled bonelessly across the scrub and sharp stones. He hadn’t seen the mindless, fading kicking of its right leg, or the pulses of dark blood drooling out from the ragged stump of its neck.

He certainly hadn’t seen Barratt’s head, even though it was lying only a yard away from his own feet.

He took an involuntary step away from it, his gut lurching in horror. The dead man’s face was turned away from him, thankfully, but there was no mistaking the color of his hair. “What did they do? What in God’s name did they do?”

“I think that’s pretty obvious,” muttered Orton.

“Well, if that don’t beat all,” said Farrow, stepping past Harrigan. “Where’s Lisetti?”

“Must be in there.” Walinski gestured with his rifle toward the cave. “They must have dragged him in.”

Harrigan swallowed hard. “We’ve got to go after him.”

“In there?” Orton stared at him. “He’s already dead, Harrigan. You heard him scream.”

“Dead men stay pretty quiet, as I recall,” said Farrow. He was smiling, an odd, lopsided smile that Harrigan didn’t like at all.

“Sir, the Villistas must know we’re not firing back. Even if they’re cautious, they’ll be coming up the pass in minutes. Less, even.” He pointed at the cave. “And if someone took Lisetti in there, maybe that means there’s another way out.”

Walinski nodded nervously. “He’s right, Sarge. That scout must have come from somewhere.”

Harrigan could see that Orton was going to dither, quite possibly long enough to get them all killed. Harrigan muttered a curse under his breath, turned away from the other men, and ducked into the cave mouth.

Inside, the darkness was impenetrable, a thick wall of inky shadow. Harrigan took a match from his top pocket and struck it against the wall. It sputtered and flared into a small, resentful flame. In its light, Harrigan saw a passage stretching several yards ahead of him, before turning sharply to the left. “Lisetti?”

There was no answer, no sound at all. He took a few more steps in, ducking slightly to avoid hitting his head.

A moment later Orton stumbled in, Farrow and Walinski just behind him. “See anything?”

“Just this tunnel.”

“Could be a mine.” Walinski’s voice echoed weirdly, even though they were only a few feet into the rock. “Somebody dug this out, that’s for sure.”

“All right,” growled Orton. “Start moving. The Mexicans could be right behind us.”

“Or in front of us.” That was Farrow. Harrigan heard Walinski snort.

“Cheery bugger, ain’t ya.”

“Keep it down, boys.” The match burned down to Harrigan’s fingers. He waved it out and struck another, then began to walk carefully along the tunnel.

He made it to the turn before he had to drop the second match. The meager light of the flame had been enough to throw his night vision off for a few moments, so Farrow spotted the glow from ahead before he did, even from his position behind Orton. “Mark, you see that?”

“I can’t see a darn thing.”

“Light ahead.”

“Unless it’s Lisetti with a lantern, that’s not good.”

“Stop the damn chatter,” whispered Orton. He sounded more nervous in the tunnel than he did out in the open with bullets flying around him. Harrigan wondered if the man had a phobia. The dark, maybe, or enclosed spaces.

The tunnel widened. The light Farrow had spoken of was bright enough for Harrigan to see by now, but it was no lantern. It was an ugly glow, a pallid grey-green. It made him think, inexplicably, of disease.

There was one more turn. He stopped, then leaned to peer around it.

“What do you see?” Orton asked.

All Harrigan could do was shake his head. The poor light and the sheer strangeness of what he was looking at simply baffled his perceptions. There was no scale to grasp, no frame of reference to call on. The tunnel simply widened into nightmare.

“I have no damn idea,” he muttered, and stepped forward, allowing the men behind him to see what he saw.

It was like an insect nest, a spider’s domain, webbed wall to wall and dripping with vile sacs. Even the spider was there, hunched vast and immobile at the center of the space, lit by a queasy green glow that issued from a hundred incomprehensible sources.

Then he brushed against a strand of the web, and felt it warm and solid against his skin. It was a fat, rubbery cable, as thick as his wrist and humming with power.

The trick played on his eyes fell away. This was no bug’s lair: it was a cavern, rounded and high-walled, its roof lost to shadow. And the spider and all its works were machines, shelled in dark, glossy metal and spilling green light from bulbs and windows and welded joints.

Harrigan’s eyes were starting to adjust to the cavern’s bizarre illumination. He turned back to see Orton, face twisted in confusion, walking in after him.

Walinski came in next, haltingly, with Farrow close behind. “You boys ever seen anything like this?”

A dark, tangled bulk dominated the center of the place, as big as a room and utterly repellent. It still reminded Harrigan of a titan spider, but dead and tipped onto its back and curled in on itself, limbs canted in ugly, ungainly geometries. Parts of it were glowing with the same queasy green light that dotted the walls, and there was a sound coming from it, a liquid, whirring vibration that set the teeth on edge.

Dozens of thick cables snaked out from the machine, some tangled on the ground, others looped in mid-air and swaying languidly. Many of them reached up to one of the tall, sac-like masses that hung from the shadowed ceiling. There were maybe half a dozen dotted around the cavern, each one the nexus of a web of cable and glowing brighter than any other machine he could see. Generators, Harrigan thought suddenly, although what they might have burned as fuel was beyond him.

He edged closer to the spidery construction, horrified and fascinated in equal measure. Two of its limbs, he saw now, were tipped with fat globes of wet, greenish glass, each a yard across and filled with writhing fog. A third, set roughly between the globes, ended in a skeletal claw of bright metal, and that in turn held what he took at first to be a long dagger of glittering black crystal, shot through with threads of gold.

Harrigan leaned close, peering at the dagger. It was maybe a foot long, a splintery fragment of glassy stone with one smooth, undulating side. The shape of it reminded him of something, but it was only when he reached out to turn the dagger in its claw that he realized what it was.

The smooth side was part of a face. Some vast, dark statue had been hammered apart, and a long thread of the broken skull salvaged to hang suspended from the gleaming claw, one blank, hooded eye glaring out into the spidery gloom.

Harrigan grimaced. He felt as though the eye was looking straight at him, watching him.

Next to his head, something inside one of the globes moved, twisting and squirming in the murk, squealing against the glass. He caught a vague impression of teeth and eyes and jellyfish fronds, and he jerked away in distaste. As he did so, he noticed what lay sprawled on the great spider’s belly. “Orton! Sergeant, get over here!”

The man was at his side in a moment, Colt still drawn. “Dear God,” he whispered. “Lisetti?”

There was no answer. Lisetti was spread across a flat metal disk in the center of the contraption, arms outstretched as if crucified, his limbs secured by glossy metal threads that cut brutally into his skin. The globes and the dagger dangled above him like loathsome fruit, and his head was tipped back, held in place by a sharp metal frame.

His face was immobile, a mask of terror.

“Is he alive?”

“I think so. Looks like he’s had some kind of fit.” Harrigan tugged on one of the wires, but it didn’t move. “We need to get him out of here.”

“Where to?”

“Anywhere. I don’t think we can stay here, sir.”

“Look sharp, boys,” Farrow said suddenly. “We got company.”

Harrigan looked up. Two men had appeared in the chamber.

The odd lighting made them hard to see clearly. Neither was very tall, and both were hunched under some kind of dark, heavy cloak. They were wearing something strange over their heads, a reflective fabric that caught what little light there was and turned it into shifting patterns of color.

There must have been another door that he hadn’t seen. Harrigan brought the Springfield up to his shoulder, his aim centered on the head of the nearest man. Or at least where he could best judge his head to be. “Keep still, the pair of you! Don’t move a damn muscle!”

The hunched men paused. Colors flashed and whirled over their hoods. The one furthest from him raised an arm as if to show them what he held: a bright metal globe no bigger than a tennis ball.

Without warning, the globe spat light.

A jagged thread of piercing brilliance ripped into Walinski. It lit him from within, hurling him backward as white fire erupted from his mouth, his eyes, his chest exploding into a blazing cage. As he fell, the flesh was already twisting off his bones.

The hooded man whirled around to Farrow, but the other soldier was faster. He dived past the weapon and grabbed the arm that held it, dragging the cowled murderer off balance. That was all Harrigan saw before the second man was on him, rushing at him out of the dark.

Except that it wasn’t a man.

Harrigan let out a cry of horror and twisted away, trying to get the rifle between him and the nightmare surging up at him. It was a tangle of limbs, a blur of snapping claws, a faceless, eyeless tumor of a head covered in pulsing tendrils. Behind it, what he had taken to be a cloak spread up and out like ragged, oozing wings.

Its claws were at his face. Harrigan had the Springfield across his body, just about keeping the thing at bay, but he couldn’t keep it there. The creature was grabbing at the rifle, trying to wrench it aside so it could get to him. In a heartbeat it would have his eyes.

And then a pistol fired, and the fluttering, convoluted head splashed open.

Harrigan cursed, ears ringing from the closeness of the shot, and shoved the creature back. “Orton!”

“What the hell is it?”

Harrigan didn’t answer, just shifted his grip on the Springfield and whipped it around as hard as he could. The stock slapped into the side of that awful head, sending tendrils and fluid flying across the chamber. The thing skittered away. Harrigan pulled the rifle back up and fired. The creature fell back, tangling itself in the hanging cables, then sagged down and flopped to the ground.

From the other side of the spider came a snarl of pain and fury.

Harrigan ducked around the machine to see Farrow still struggling with the other monster. He still had hold of its limb, keeping the weapon away from him, but the rest of its myriad claws were tearing into his body as the two struggled. His uniform was ragged and spilling crimson.

His hands must have been slick with his own blood. As Harrigan fought his way through the web toward him he saw Farrow lose his grip on the limb and stumble back.

A claw darted forward, closed around his neck.

Harrigan remembered Barratt’s head lying in the sand. He fired reflexively, not even aiming, and the claw exploded. Farrow spun away. The creature turned to face him, raising its bright metal globe.

He fired again. A hole appeared clean through the monster’s body. It staggered, colors whirling across the surface of its pulpy head, and lightning erupted from the globe to arc wildly across the chamber.

It must been a reflex, or a spasm of whatever it had in place of fingers. The leaping, blinding arc of energy that shrieked out from it went nowhere near Harrigan. It tore through cables, carved a glowing track into the spider-machine, and flew up into one of the hanging generator sacs.

The spider-limb tilted, jetting yellow gas. Harrigan saw the globe suspended from it crack, the glass crazing instantly. Then a sheet of sparks hissed down from above.

He stumbled back, a hand up to shield his eyes. The generator sac was on fire.

It was already swelling, some awful pressure distending its metal shell from within. A moment later it split a seam, and a gout of grey fluid vomited from it, splashing heavily onto the ground, burning. Liquid flame spilled down over its own cables.

There was a metal shriek, a shuddering impact that Harrigan felt right through the cavern floor. He turned his face aside as the sac shivered apart.

Fire poured down onto Lisetti.

The noise in the cavern was deafening, filled with the roar of flames and the shriek of escaping gases from the machines. Harrigan stumbled toward the spider, but it was already an inferno, its cables twisting and cracking in the heat. Lisetti hadn’t made a sound. Harrigan hoped that he’d been dead from the lightning before the fire rained down on him, or that his mind was too far gone to feel pain.

Something grabbed his arm. Orton’s feverish, sweat-slick face was inches from his own.

“Harrigan!” he howled. “Why won’t they die?”

“What?” Harrigan looked back to see the creature that had attacked him, hauling itself back upright. It’s head was an opened, droozing mess, but it was still trying to get to the machine. Harrigan saw it reach through flames toward the crystal dagger, its limbs immediately catching alight.

It was doing something to the claw, trying to get the dagger free, but its head was on fire now.

“Forget them. Let them burn.” He shook Orton hard. “You hear me?”

The man nodded jerkily. “Yes.”

“We need to get out of here.” He risked a glance upward, saw fire and sparks rushing from cable to cable. “This whole place is going.”

“Where’s Farrow?”

Harrigan opened his mouth to answer, but suddenly there was a deafening squeal behind him. He whirled, saw the spider brilliantly on fire, burning gas jetting out of its limbs in a dozen places. The two creatures were leaning over it, both aflame and yet still working at the machine’s innards.

The squeal was increasing in pitch, a giant’s kettle coming to boil. The structure shivered, dropped half a yard, and then tilted wildly toward him.

Harrigan ducked away and put his arms up, hopelessly.

Then everything was light, and sound, and finally silence.

* * *

The fires were still burning when Harrigan awoke. He couldn’t have been unconscious for very long, a few minutes at most.

For several seconds all he could move was his eyes. He looked about, trying to determine where he was. Finally, he was able to lift his head a little, and saw that the blast from the spider had knocked him halfway across the chamber. There was no sign of his rifle.

He tried to speak, but couldn’t hear his own voice, just a distant ringing. He tried to get up, but there was no strength in his left leg, and he fell again. He could feel nothing below his knee except a slick, pulsing warmth. He was bleeding, badly.

The cavern, lit by fires, was brighter than he had ever seen it. The ground was littered with twisted shards of metal, mangled pipes, broken glass. From where he lay he could see the ruins of the two creatures. Both were still moving, but not in any meaningful way.

Orton was lying motionless among the fallen cables, a crimson thing, broken and oozing. His fingers scrabbled at the ground for a while, but then grew still.

I’m the last one, Harrigan thought despairingly. All the others were gone, these men he’d marched away with into the gorge, so many hours before. Walinski and Lisetti burned, Barratt with his head gone, Orton blown to pieces and Tyler vanished into the hills. Farrow must have bled too much to live. Harrigan was alone, and close to the end. The flames would close in on him, and take him down.

He didn’t want to burn. He didn’t want to die alone in a cave and never be found.

He was hurting. Some part of the machine had struck him in the left thigh, and was in him bone-deep. There was a rawness in his core, a freezing feeling, as though part of him was already dead inside.

Maybe he was bleeding internally. He had heard that men died like that. They would go cold and die and never know why.

A shadow loomed over him, blurry and indistinct. He frowned up at it. “Farrow?”

“You still with me, boy?”

“Don’t know.”

“Let’s find out.”

* * *

The Villistas were still outside, clustered on the hillside below the scoop. Harrigan shouldn’t really have been surprised to see them; after all, they had been trying to shoot him only a few minutes before. Still, emerging to find them waiting jolted him momentarily. He’d forgotten all about them.

There were bodies lined up on the hillside, items of clothing draped over their faces. One of them was the scout. Harrigan knew that at least two more of those corpses were lying in the dust because of him. So it was even betting, he decided as Farrow helped him down onto the slope, whether the Mexicans would take him prisoner or simply shoot him where he stood.

They did neither.

As they limped past the silent men, each one of them stepped back, as if they didn’t want to be close to him. Some crossed themselves, and threw nervous glances back up to the pass.

None of them met his eye, for fear of the curse that was on him, and would ride with him until the day he died.

Chapter One: Old Wounds

She dreamed of mud, and rain, and the sweet-sour stench of dead men opened and left to rot.

She dreamed of a labyrinth cut from the ground, an insane sprawl of chasms and towers that stretched for miles across a torn and desolate plain. The city had been scoured by years of war, shattered by tons of explosives and poisoned by vast banks of black vapor that drifted across the land and tore at the lungs. It was a place where nothing moved, where every creature that had walked or swam or crawled was dead. Only when the suns were gone did life return, drifting down from the sky on leathery wings to feast on the spoiled carcasses below.

She dreamed of being blind, and deaf. Unable to taste or smell or touch, severed from every physical sense, a thing of pure, unhindered thought. And yet somehow aware that she was being carried at unimaginable speeds, across endless gulfs of space, and that her destination was a place so awful, so utterly terrifying that to even know its name was death.

And then the bus hit a rut in the road, and the jolt woke her, and she remembered that those were not her dreams, but those of a dead man.

* * *

The bus arrived almost two hours behind schedule. There had been bad weather on the road up from Boston—first driving rain, and then, as the highway snaked north, white curtains of fog that had forced the driver to slow to little more than walking pace. The fog had been so thick that Carolyn Fern didn’t realize that she was nearing Arkham until she was already within its boundaries.

She knew that there were dozens of small farmsteads surrounding the city, but she hadn’t seen any of those, nor the outlying suburbs. Only when the bus turned north and into the denser parts of town did Carolyn notice the first houses—flat grey silhouettes drifting past her window, silent and strange amid the featureless white air.

The bus station was in the north of Arkham, on the corner of High Lane. By the time the bus pulled up at its stand the air had largely cleared, the fog replaced by a thin, high cloud that filtered the sunlight into a smoky haze. It also stole whatever warmth that sun might have offered; as soon as Carolyn stepped down off the running board she felt a chill, and found herself very glad she had worn her winter coat and hat. Arkham in November was, it seemed, far cooler than Providence had been, or even Boston. The little city had a climate all its own.

She picked up her overnight bag from the luggage rack and crossed the sidewalk to the steps of the bus station. It was a big building, larger than she’d been expecting, a wide two-story brownstone with a line of bus stands in front and a paved parking lot to the left. Carolyn could see that the lot was half full of buses, lined up silent and empty. They would be pressed back into service once evening came, and the working population of Arkham emerged to seek their myriad ways home.

The bus engine behind her clattered to a stop, leaving a sudden, oppressive quiet. Carolyn walked along to the end of the steps, partway around the corner of the building. Only there did she feel secluded enough to stop and stretch.

The journey had been twice as long as she had allowed for. Not only was her schedule ruined, but it felt like her spine was, too. When she tipped her head back, her neck crackled alarmingly.

She put her head down, readjusted her spectacles, and then glanced up and down the street, trying to get her bearings. In one direction the road stretched away between clustered houses and looming, grimy apartment blocks before meeting a distant junction. In the other it shelved downhill to the river, the great, slow Miskatonic that curved its steady way through the city and out toward the sea. Carolyn could smell its waters, could hear the chuff and hoot of cargo boats clustering around the docks, the far-off hammer of steam cranes, all softened by distance and the cool damp air into a faint, discordant chanting.

If the bus had not been so slow, Carolyn might liked to have seen the river.

But her appointment with Dr. Hardstrom was due at half past twelve, and it was already noon. Carolyn had planned to seek out a night’s lodgings upon her arrival, and take a few minutes to freshen up and gather her thoughts before the meeting. Now, she calculated, peering rather sorrowfully at her wristwatch, she had no choice but to go straight to him.

She sighed. That would mean visiting the director of Arkham Asylum in the clothes she had traveled in, crumpled and saddlesore, and almost entirely unprepared for the encounter. It was not how she had hoped the day would go.

Still, there was nothing to be gained from regrets. Carolyn squared her shoulders, pushed her cloche hat a little further down onto her head, and went into the bus station to phone for a cab.

* * *

The vehicles of the Arkham Checkered Cab Company were painted to ape the famous Yellow and Checker taxies so popular in the big cities, but the cab itself was a rather battered Hudson built six years previously. The machine had no side windows and a canvas roof, which Carolyn might have appreciated more had she visited Arkham in the summer.

Her driver was a tall, spindly man with a flat cap pulled down low over his forehead, shadowing his face from the low sun. He got out to open the door for her, so Carolyn guessed that the company was still in its infancy. The drivers in Providence didn’t do that.

The journey itself was uneventful, if less than comfortable. Had the weather been warmer, or the cab’s interior more protected from the elements, Carolyn would have taken more notice of her surroundings. Usually it was a rare pleasure to sit in the back of a taxi and watch the world go by. Today, though, she hunched in the Hudson and alternated between stuffing her hands under her arms for warmth, or holding tightly onto the door to avoid sliding around on the shiny leather bench seat.

Finally, after several freezing minutes, the cab took a rapid series of corners and then slowed alongside a long, high wall. Carolyn put her head out above the door and saw, a hundred yards away, what looked like a wrought-iron gate set between two massive gateposts. “Oh, are we here?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The driver pulled up, then got out and opened her door. She handed him the overnight bag and reached for her purse.

“How much is that?”

“We didn’t cross any bridges. A quarter.”

Carolyn climbed out of the cab, then fished in her purse for the money, plus a decent tip. She still had a little cash left from her savings.

As she handed him the coins he tipped his head back slightly, and under the shadow of his hat brim she saw that his left eye was a sunken socket, covered with blank white skin and framed by deep creases that spoke of old and terrible scars. He saw her looking at the injury immediately, and held her gaze, as if daring her to look away.

Carolyn supposed most people did, but she had seen far worse. “Thank you for the ride, sir. I hope the company can afford custom cabs soon.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up in something close to a smile. “Me too, ma’am. And remember to call us when you get out, okay? You don’t want to be walking at this end of town on your own.”

* * *

The cab had dropped Carolyn a short distance away from the gate, probably so as not to linger where it could be seen from within the asylum. She brushed herself down, straightening her coat as best she could and adjusting her hat, then picked up the bag and walked toward the gateposts she had seen.

The gates between them were securely locked. There was a gatehouse to one side, but when Carolyn stood on her toes and peered into its window, she saw only an empty chair and, upturned and flattened messily onto the counter, a very ill-treated copy of Mann’s Der Zauberberg.

There was an electric bell on her side of the counter. Carolyn pressed it firmly and heard a distant chiming.

Through the thick bars of the gate, Arkham Asylum was a darkness against the sky. Its outline was jagged: five stories of stark masonry and pointed roofs and narrow, barred windows. In a while, she hoped, someone would emerge from that gloomy edifice and let her in, but the path between the gate and the building was long. Carolyn prepared herself for a few more minutes standing in the cold.

She resisted the urge to look at her watch again.

There was no one about, and the street was very quiet. If Carolyn listened closely she could hear the sounds of distant traffic, but there were no cars in sight. There was no breath of wind, no voices, no birdsong. Just a flat, cold stillness. She could understand that the street in front of the sanitarium would not be a place to find an abundance of casual passersby, but even so, the silence was unnerving.

A shadow crossed her, something high and hazy that fluttered as it dipped below the opposite row of buildings. Carolyn looked up, trying to see what kind of bird it might have been, but it was already gone.

When she turned back to the gate, there was a man standing behind it.

Carolyn started slightly. She was certain that there had been no one in sight when she had rung the bell. Either the man had moved supernaturally fast, or he had been deliberately keeping out of sight.

Neither thought gave her much comfort.

The man was dressed in the plain uniform of an asylum orderly. He was big, wide across the shoulders and a solid foot taller than Carolyn. She was perhaps five foot two in good heels. The orderly looked as though he could have picked her up and snapped her in half.

His face was angular, his hair cropped to nothing. He was standing perfectly still, regarding Carolyn with calm, hooded grey eyes.

There was a name tag on his uniform that read Groves.

Several seconds passed while she waited for the orderly to say something. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to, Carolyn cleared her throat. She had a sudden, unbidden vision of a yellow duckling, standing in front of a silent and hungry wolf.

She shook the thought away. “Good afternoon, sir. My name’s Carolyn Fern. I have an appointment with Dr. Hardstrom at twelve thirty.”

Carolyn called most people sir, or ma’am, unless she knew them. It was an affectation she had learned from her mother, who was from Georgia, and most of her colleagues thought it unfashionably servile. It often served to put people at their ease, though.

If it had an effect on Groves, he didn’t show it. He merely stood where he was, slightly hunched, with his big coarse hands curled loosely at his sides.

Carolyn was beginning to think that she was being tested, somehow. She drew herself up a little taller. “Mr. Groves, my appointment with the director is in less than five minutes, and I’d very much like to be on time. Would you kindly open the gate?”

Groves blinked lazily, then reached into his trouser pocket. Carolyn saw him rummage there for a few worrying seconds, then slowly, link by link, draw out a length of chain.

There was a key on the end of it. Carolyn stepped back as he unlocked the gate and pulled it open. The hinges protested, forcing out a long, pained squeal.

She stepped through the gap. “Much obliged, sir.”

Groves pushed the gate closed behind her. Carolyn heard him re-lock it and then he was shouldering past her, stuffing the key back into his pocket as he strode up the gravel path. She watched his retreating back and, just before she ran to catch him up, decided that she really didn’t like Mr. Groves very much.

She walked behind him along the path, her shoes crunching softly on the pale gravel. To either side of her, neatly clipped lawns spread around the dark brick walls of the asylum, scattered with wooden benches where less troubled patients might sit and take the air, at least on warmer days. There were, she noticed, no trees on the asylum grounds, nor shrubs, nor statues. Nothing that anyone could hide behind.

Even though the asylum had not been originally built for its present purpose, it had been adapted with considerable care.

Groves stopped at the bottom of the steps. Carolyn thanked him again as she went past him, not too coldly, and trotted up to the main entrance. The oak door was closed, but not locked. Carolyn turned the handle and stepped through.

The door shut behind her, and when it did Groves was still on the other side. Carolyn wasn’t displeased about that.

She had entered the asylum’s atrium, a wide space with high ceilings and a gleaming tiled floor. A curved oak desk was set against the far wall. Carolyn walked across the hall to it, very much aware of the echoes her footsteps struck from the marble, and announced herself to the nurse who sat there.

The nurse raised her grey head and fixed Carolyn with a fish-like stare. “You are almost late,” she said. Her voice spooled out slowly, word by word, as though she were speaking for a gramophone recording.

“Well, yes,” Carolyn replied. “Almost.”

“Dr. Hardstrom values punctuality.”

“An admirable quality, ma’am, and one I share. Perhaps you could show me to his office?”

The nurse reached for a bell set into the desktop. “I shall call Groves.”

“On second thought,” Carolyn smiled, her hand darting out to cover the button, “maybe you could just tell me where it is?”

* * *

Hardstrom’s office was small, very tidy, and almost unbearably warm.

Following the reception nurse’s maddeningly slow and precise directions, Carolyn had climbed to the asylum’s third floor and negotiated her way through a small labyrinth of tiled corridors. Finally she had arrived at Hardstrom’s office, only to find the door firmly shut. However, true to his reputation, he had been waiting for her, exactly on time, and as soon as she knocked he had called her through.

She had opened the door onto a wall of dry heat.

After the coolness outdoors, and the clean ceramic chill of the asylum’s corridors, the warmth of the room was a shock to her system. It had stolen the breath from her. Carolyn had had to fight off a wave of disorientation as she had stepped in, and her glasses had steamed up in seconds.

Now, thankfully, her coat and hat were on a hook beside the door, and she was sitting in front of Hardstrom’s desk, polishing her spectacles while the director rearranged his paperwork.

Unlike most medical men of Carolyn’s acquaintance, Eric Hardstrom kept a scrupulously tidy workspace. The leather surface of the desk was home to nothing except a small electric reading lamp with a green glass shade, a brass writing set, and a rack of trays. The trays faced away from Carolyn, so she couldn’t see whether they were labeled or not, but she would have wagered good money that they were, and probably to some exacting personal system.

Hardstrom was tall, slightly stooped over his desk, his forehead high and gleaming under an edge of receding hair. He took two manila folders from the rack, placed them on the desk, and straightened them so their edges lined up perfectly. “You look wan, Doctor,” he said, without looking up. “Perhaps you would like some tea.”

“No thank you, sir.” Carolyn wanted, at that moment, a very tall, very cold glass of lemonade, but she doubted it was on offer. “Ah, are those files on my patient?”

“One of them is.” Hardstrom sat back. “The other is on you.”

She replaced her glasses, blinking as her eyes refocused. “Excuse me?”

“I had your records sent over by telegraph. Sorry if that sounds a little untrusting, but in my position I have to be cautious.”

There was a weariness to his words, a quiet weight of resignation in his voice. He reached for one of the files, spread it open, and lifted a sheet of paper from inside. Carolyn could see typing through it.

“This,” Hardstrom began, “is an impressive resume, for a woman of your age.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Carolyn, although she could tell he wasn’t complimenting her. “Rhode Island Hospital has an exceptional training program.”

“Given how quickly you seem to have gained your degree, I can only imagine.” His eyes flicked up to her, dark and sad, then back down to the paper. “Then a year’s training in psychiatry at Butler, after which you were accepted by the Lemarchand Institute for your residency. Of which you are still in your first ten months.” He set the paper down. “Remarkable.”

Carolyn sat very still. “There was no preferential treatment, sir.”

“I didn’t suggest there was.”

“No, sir,” Carolyn replied, very quietly. “You did not.”

Still, the implication would always be there. Carolyn had been the only woman in her classes for much of her medical life. Ever since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment six years earlier, the number of women training to become doctors had gone into a steep decline. In the field of allopathic psychiatry, she was almost unique.

As a result, she had been forced to work twice as hard as her male counterparts, for twice as long, and for half the recognition. If she had not been as driven as she was she would have crumbled long before. Little wonder, on balance, that she had been treating patients almost unsupervised in her last few months at Lemarchand.

Plus, of course, there were a lot of patients to treat. The Great War had been over for eight years, but it had left a lot of mental scars in its wake.

Hardstrom tapped the paper with a fingertip. “Your supervising physician has added a personal note, Dr. Fern. Seems he considers you something of a prodigy.”

“Dr. Spencer is a very kind man.”

“It would carry more weight with me if you were still under his supervision,” said Hardstrom flatly. He set the paper down. “But you’re not, are you?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

“In fact, you’ve been suspended from the institute pending an investigation.”

Carolyn stiffened. “Forgive me, Doctor, but that’s not the case. I have not been suspended. I voluntarily removed myself from duty after the incident.”

“Ah. Yes.” Hardstrom’s head tipped slightly. “You understand that I was very distressed to hear about that.”

“I do, sir, and thank you.”

“Even after so long, the death of any patient…” For a moment, he seemed to stoop just a little lower, as if the weight of the event had been added to that of all the other woes under his roof. “Always a tragedy. Always.”

Carolyn kept her voice low. “How long did you treat Malachi for, sir?”

“Two years and seven months.” Hardstrom straightened almost imperceptibly. With that, his moment of vulnerability was done. “He didn’t talk about his time here, I assume.”

“He was very reticent about his past in general, sir. To be honest, I didn’t know he’d been a patient here until after his death.” Carolyn frowned, remembering. “Even during hypnotic regression, he kept so much locked away.”

“A talent he displayed here, too.” Hardstrom narrowed his eyes slightly. “Dr. Fern, I have to admit I’m still rather at a loss as to what you want from me. Tragic though it is, my involvement in this case ended more than seven years ago.”

“Yes, but his treatment here had to be a significant factor in his psyche.”

“Seven years is a long time.” He sat back, placing his hands flat on the desktop, the tips of his fingers just touching the files, as if claiming dominion over them by contact alone. “You feel that you’re not in possession of all the facts, and so do I. Quid pro quo, Dr. Fern. I want your version of this man’s case history before I give you mine.”

Carolyn opened her mouth to protest, but then realized she didn’t have anything valid to say on the matter. Professional conduct aside, if she wanted sensitive information from Eric Hardstrom, she could hardly refuse him the same.

So she settled herself in the hard chair and tried to ignore the heat while she proceeded to relate, in detail, her treatment of Malachi Farrow.

* * *

Arkham Asylum, like many of the older generation of sanitariums, was beginning to be regarded within the psychiatric community as something of a blunt instrument. Its basic purpose was to take in patients with all manner of insanities and incarcerate them until they were no longer a danger to themselves or the public at large. There were treatments available, of course, but the primary purpose of the asylum was to remove the insane from society.

Carolyn and her fellow doctors at the Lemarchand Institute, however, did their best to cure, rather than imprison. And their results were good. Using a combination of Freudian regression and somewhat experimental hypnotherapy, Carolyn herself had overseen the successful treatment of seven patients within the past six months.

There were always failures, though. Malachi James Farrow was the one that haunted Carolyn more than any other.

Farrow had been admitted to the Lemarchand Institute in the late spring of 1926, suffering from night terrors and a crippling melancholia. Unlike many of Carolyn’s patients, he had not been brought to the institute by worried friends or exhausted family members. He had simply walked in of his own accord, offering what little money he had been able to scrape together and asking, in his strange, indefinable accent, for whatever help he could afford.

He had no family, or at least none that he would speak of.

Farrow was not an easy patient. He could spend days without speaking, and when he did talk he was often secretive and evasive. But, as the weeks went on, he opened up a little, both in his conscious conversations with Carolyn and under hypnosis, letting her tease apart the threads of his depression, to explore the nightmares that robbed him of sleep, to learn about the life he had led before Providence and the cold corridors of the institute.

He had been a soldier, he admitted, but had not been able to fight in the trenches. He had been injured in an earlier war: the brief, brutal debacle in Mexico that had tried, and utterly failed, to capture Pancho Villa. While his fellows sailed off to the muddied horrors of France and Belgium, Farrow lay wracked with pain and nightmare visions in a Boston hospital. Even when his body had healed, his mind had still not recovered from what he had witnessed in the Sierra Madres.

“Ran into some bad fellers, ma’am. Real monsters. Carved up the whole squad, except me and one other guy. But you don’t wanna know about that.”

Carolyn was patient, and persistent, and skilled. She had started to make real progress with Malachi Farrow, even to the point where he had been able to sleep for an hour or more each night. And then, very early one morning in October, he had packed his few belongings and left the institute without warning or a word of explanation.

Three days later, Carolyn was informed by the police that a body had been found in an alleyway in the town of Arkham, rent by stab wounds they could only describe to her as “horrible.” The cadaver was identified as Malachi Farrow, and there were no suspects.

* * *

“Dr. Hardstrom, I oversaw almost every facet of his treatment. I explored his dreams under hypnosis, I prescribed the sedatives to try and help him sleep. And now he’s…” She looked down at her own hands. She hadn’t been aware that her fingers were knotting together. “Primum non nocere, sir.”

“The Oath is not a stick to beat ourselves with, Doctor.” Hardstrom’s long fingers stroked the manila cover. “I am certain that you do everything within your power to help your patients.”

“I may have put him in the way of harm.”

“From what I recall, he was more than capable of finding his own way into danger. You are aware that he was a fighting man.”

“I know he used to be a soldier, but so did many of my patients.” She shook her head. “Dr. Hardstrom, I understand what you’re saying. But I can’t accept that what he did in wartime makes him somehow responsible for what happened.”

“Is that any more unlikely than believing that you are responsible?”

“Maybe while I was exploring his dreams I reached back too far, unleashed a buried memory. Maybe I triggered something.” Carolyn shrugged helplessly. “Sir, I just don’t know. That’s the whole issue. That’s why I can’t keep treating patients, not until I’m certain that my therapy wasn’t a contributing factor in his death.”

Hardstrom sighed. “The only factor, as far as I’m concerned, was whoever took a knife to him. But I can see you require more.” He paused for a few moments, as though making up his mind. “Carolyn, we’re doctors. Overconfidence in our abilities can be catastrophic. But so can a crisis of confidence, to ourselves and our patients. Which is why, against my better judgment and quite possibly Arkham Asylum policy, I’m going to give you this file.”

He lifted the folder and passed it to her. “Have it back to me by noon tomorrow, please. I am sure you will have discovered all there is to know about Mr. Farrow by that time.”

* * *

An hour later, Carolyn found herself sitting in a small diner on Curwen Street. The folder lay on the table in front of her, unopened.

She had left the asylum in something of a daze. The suddenness of Hardstrom’s decision, not to mention his dismissal of her, had set her badly off balance. Before that point she had been absolutely certain that he would refuse her access to Farrow’s records. After all, even if she’d been actively practicing he would have been under no obligation to show her anything. The transfer of medical records from one hospital to another could be a haphazard process at the best of times, and in the case of those undergoing psychiatric treatments it occurred very much at the discretion of asylum directors. Carolyn’s own self-imposed exile from the profession had made her request seem even more hopeless.

And yet, in the blink of an eye, the folder had been there, held perfectly level in the space between them. Carolyn had stared at it for several seconds before taking it and thanking Hardstrom for his time. To her shame, she had kept checking the folder was still in her bag as she made her way out of the asylum, just to make sure that the meeting had actually happened and was not the result of a minor psychotic break.

Carolyn took a sip of the coffee she had bought, and opened the folder.

It was the first time she had done so. The urge to find out what lay within the manila cover had been almost overpowering, and if Carolyn had been anywhere else but Arkham Asylum she would have stopped to read it as soon as she had found a place to sit. But, if she was honest with herself, something about the atmosphere within those high dark walls unsettled her, and she had left as quickly as possible, even to the point of ignoring the driver’s advice and going on foot. She hadn’t wanted to use the reception phone to call a cab, not while the nurse was still there. That cold, unblinking gaze would have been one strangeness too much.

It had taken her half an hour to find her way to a more populous area of Arkham, and longer still to track down somewhere that she could sit and read uninterrupted. But a long walk in the cold air had turned out to be welcome. It had cleared her head.

The diner was comfortably warm and quiet, perhaps a quarter full. A couple in the next booth along were keeping their conversation low, too low for Carolyn to properly make out what they were saying, although she could detect a smiling note of risk in the woman’s voice. Beyond them a dark-haired woman, perhaps in her early thirties, sat alone and picked nervously at a sandwich. Some Miskatonic University students had positioned themselves along the counter, their textbooks messily piled. If anyone noticed Carolyn at all, she guessed, they would probably take her for a student, too. She was often told she looked younger than she really was, and she really was quite young.

“Refill, honey?”

She looked up to see a waitress, plump and kind, coffee pot in hand, and flicked the folder closed. “Why thank you, yes.”

“Can I get you something to eat?”

Carolyn considered her dwindling finances. The Institute wasn’t in the habit of paying doctors who refused to treat their patients. “I’d better not. Maybe—”

A sudden clatter cut through her words and made the stream of coffee from the pot waver and cease. The dark-haired woman had set her cup down wrong, and it had tipped, emptying its dregs into the saucer. Carolyn watched the woman dabbing at the mess with a napkin.

Her hands, very pale and slender, were shaking.

She tilted slightly, peering past the couple to see the brunette’s face. Unexpectedly the woman met her gaze and held it, eyes dark with a nervous intensity. Then the waitress was at her side. “Let me get that.”

“I’m fine.” The reply was brusque; not quite a snap, but close.

Carolyn frowned. The woman was plainly frightened, but doing everything she could to keep the fear under control. It put the edge in her voice, the tremor in her fingers. Carolyn had seen hidden fear often enough to recognize it at a distance.

The woman slid out of the booth. She wore a long, dark coat, unbuttoned, and no hat. She stared at Carolyn for a moment and then whirled away, practically running out of the diner.

The door clattered shut behind her, the bell above it chiming tinnily.

Carolyn shook herself. The waitress caught her eye, smiled apologetically, and then collected the upturned cup and saucer.

“Odd town,” Carolyn muttered under her breath. “Very odd town.”

She returned her attention to the folder, opening it again and flattening the cover with the heel of her hand. The first document inside was a plain sheet of Arkham Asylum letterhead, signed by Eric Hardstrom and bearing a single word in red rubber stamp. Closed.

Carolyn lifted the sheet away, and almost gasped when she saw what lay beneath it.

She glanced about, quickly, to make sure no one was within reading distance of the paper-clipped stack of pages in front of her, then lifted it up and turned it over, studying it from every angle. It seemed genuine, which made Carolyn wonder just how Hardstrom had managed to lay hands on it at all.

What she held was a clear carbon copy of the police report on Malachi Farrow’s murder.

The reason it was in the file made perfect sense, given the asylum director’s passion for organization. He must have secured a copy of the report as a means of closing Farrow’s case. I am sure you will have discovered all there is to know about Mr. Farrow, he had told her. As if there simply wasn’t much to know about him at all.

Well, it would seem she was about to learn more than she’d expected. Carolyn took a gulp of cooling coffee, and read on.

* * *

Farrow had been discovered at dawn on the twenty-ninth of October, in an alley off Federal Street, dead of multiple stab wounds. The alley had been in disarray, and the man had dozens of defensive injuries on his hands and arms. He had fought for his life.

Distressingly little police time had been devoted to the case. Once it was determined that Farrow had been undergoing psychiatric treatment it seemed that the forces of law simply washed their hands of him and walked away. Farrow’s death remained unexplained, although robbery or a spontaneous act of violence was considered most likely. There were no witnesses, no serious suspects, no murder weapon.

Farrow had been buried in a pauper’s grave. No one attended his funeral

And that, for most people, had been the last of Malachi James Farrow, the man who had dreamed of monsters.

* * *

Carolyn sighed. There was little in the report that she had not been told at the time. The next two pages were almost blank, a few sparse lines of accounting to tie up Farrow’s pitiful finances. It was only when she turned these sheets over that she found the coroner’s report.

The starkness of it was shocking. There, scrawled hurriedly on an outline drawing of a generic human figure, were the wounds that had killed Malachi Farrow. One was circled, labeled in a spidery, untidy hand as the probable cause of death: a knife blow that had entered through Farrow’s left eye and exited the back of his skull.

Carolyn scanned further down the page. Much of the information was academic, completely in keeping with the state of a man who had endured a sustained and brutal knife attack, and who had finally succumbed to a sickening brain injury. It was the coroner’s opinion that the man would have been dead within minutes of that final blow, due to neural shock and blood loss. Carolyn hoped he had not been conscious for any of that time.

What was more of a concern to the coroner, however, was the nature of the weapon Farrow had been attacked with. All that he had been able to surmise was that the instrument of death had been “multi-bladed.”

Carolyn sat back, staring at the page. Suddenly the diner wasn’t warm anymore.

Without warning, Farrow’s voice was in her ears, as plainly and clearly as if he had been sitting opposite her, his strange drawl stretched and distorted by the drowsiness of hypnotic regression. He was telling her about his dreams.

“Sometimes they come at me with knives,” he murmured. “Funny knives, like a pepper shaker full of…” He chuckled. “…full of razors. I think they want something out of me.”

“Multi-bladed,” she breathed.

Carolyn shook herself back to the present and raised a hand for more coffee. She had a lot of reading to do.

Chapter Two: Affairs of the Heart

Huntress Fashions had its new signboard by the time Diana Stanley returned from lunch. When she had left, the workmen from Honeywell’s had just started setting up their stepladders on either side of the door. Diana had spoken to the foreman on her way out, reminding him that she had a delivery arranged for one o’clock, and should a van arrive from Kenley and Smith he was to direct the driver around the corner to the stock entrance on Byrne Lane. Now, less than forty minutes later, the job was almost done. Only one workman remained aloft, teetering as he pinned the final sections of framing back into place.

Diana stopped at the edge of the sidewalk and studied the sign. The painter had taken her sketches and made something really quite special; the colors were bold without being stark, the font elegant, and the silhouette of Diana herself, depicted as the huntress of legend, was expertly rendered in a classic European style.

There was a time when Diana would have been impressed, even pleased. Today, it took all her strength just to step under that sign and go back into the store.

The presence of the workmen had not deterred her customers, she noted. There were at least four women perusing the displays, and another three waiting to be served at the counter. She had left the shop in the charge of her assistant, Millie, and the girl had a look in her eye that Diana normally associated with animals on their way to slaughter. She gave the girl a reassuring nod as she got close. “With you in a minute, dear.”

Millie smiled in return, then went back to explaining to Mrs. Oxford why the two-dollar opera gloves would look better with pearls than the pair costing half as much.

Diana went through into the back office and closed the door behind her, shrugging off her coat and hanging it carefully on its padded hanger. There was a mirror near the window, and she stood before it for a few seconds, studying her reflection, making sure that nothing of her internal turmoil showed. Then she reached under her skirt, slipped the switchblade out from the loop she had sewn onto her garter, and put it back in her desk drawer, next to the revolver.

Then she forced a smile onto her face and, thus prepared, went back to rescue Millie from Mrs. Oxford.

* * *

When Diana had first arrived in Arkham, Huntress had been called Emmie’s Boutique, and was so close to financial collapse that she had been able to buy the store outright in cash. It had cost less than half her savings, and not even touched what she had made from selling her father’s farm.

However, merely buying a business concern was only the first step on a long trail. A dead store was a money pit—Diana would need to reclaim the boutique’s lost customer base, and quickly, if she were not to end up bankrupt. And in a place like Arkham, which called itself a city but still functioned much like a small and gossip-ridden town, the only way to do that was by making the correct contacts.

It was a process Diana regarded as a necessary evil. To be honest she really didn’t care for people all that much, but she was very good at parting them from their money, hence her chosen career. Everybody, she had learned long ago, wants something; it was her skill to be able to quickly determine what that thing was and, if she could, find a way to supply it.

At the maximum benefit to herself, of course.

She had started by joining the Women’s League, and volunteering to help run the accounts and deal with charitable donations. She’d even offered a small discount to League members, which had given her some of the store’s first regular customers.

It was no coincidence that the Women’s League shared several important members with the Arkham Historical Society. Diana had no more interest in history than she did in the supposed sisterhood of the League, but the odd little clique of antiquarians was merely a stepping stone to her next target, the Chamber of Commerce.

For an aspiring businesswoman, the Chamber was something of a holy grail. As soon as Diana was accepted into the organization her clientele doubled. She was able to start investing in the store, changing its identity and its stock, building on the goodwill she had acquired. After a month or two, she had to hire Millie just to keep up.

And it was there, in a whispered conversation after one of the Chamber’s policy meetings, that it was suggested her next application should be for membership of the Silver Twilight Lodge.

The Lodge itself held no interest for Diana. Spiritualism in all its forms was, in her eyes, the domain of the truly weak-minded—superstitious biddies so terrified of the grave they would believe any fairytale that promised them an afterlife. Even Diana’s Sunday trips to South Church were made grudgingly, and purely for show. She knelt and stood and sang with the rest, but her mind would always be elsewhere. She gave no more credence to the existence of the Almighty than she did the Easter Bunny. However, her recommendation to the Lodge had been made by Mr. Phillip Avery, and thus was not to be refused.

Avery was a walking collection of war wounds who Diana found personally repugnant, but his standing in the Chamber of Commerce was legendary. She spent a week listening to him extol the mysteries of the Lodge in tones that bordered on the fanatical, nodding and smiling at him in all the right places while dreaming of a Huntress Fashions in every town from Portland to Washington, D.C.

And if the oily patronage of Phillip Avery was required to make that happen, she would happily endure him and his silly little séance club for as long as it took.

* * *

It was a good day for business. By the time Diana was finally able to close the door on her last customer it was well after five, and the street outside was dark.

She flipped the Open sign around to Closed, turned the latch on the door and drew down the blind. “Millie?”

The girl popped up from behind the counter. She had been collecting discarded tags from the floor. “Yes, ma’am?”

For a moment Diana didn’t know what to say. She and Millie were not friends; friendship was something she had never really learned the trick of. But they had worked together a long time, now. The girl was kind, and loyal, an innocent in a world that, as Diana now knew, was vile to its core.

The thought came to her that there was a very real chance she would never see Millie again. If things went badly, the girl would be left alone to face the darkness. Diana was not normally one for sentiment, but that made her oddly uncomfortable.

She smiled sadly. “It’s been a long day, hasn’t it?”

Millie blinked. “I, ah…I guess…”

“Let’s leave things as they are for tonight, shall we? I’ll come in early tomorrow and spruce the place up.”

“Ma’am, are you okay?” Millie’s round, freckled face was creased in concern. Normally the pair of them would clean and tidy the store together, getting it ready for the next day. She probably couldn’t remember a working day that had not ended so. “You’ve been so out of sorts…”

“I’m fine, dear. Nothing an early night won’t fix.”

“Well…”

“Go on, get out of here early for once. Live a little!”

Millie looked unsure for a few seconds. Then she grinned, and bobbed her pretty head, and hurried off to get her coat.

Once she was gone, Diana locked the store up, checking each door and window in turn to make sure they were secure and that no one was lurking about outside. Then she switched off the lights and climbed the narrow stairs to her room.

There was a carpetbag under her bed, a stout tan affair with leather fittings. Diana pulled it free, stared at it in apprehension for a few seconds, then, steeling herself, tugged it open.

Everything was still inside, just as she had left it. Even the bloodstains were intact.

She closed the bag, tightened its straps, and went to prepare for the night’s excursion.

* * *

At first, Diana had regarded the Lodge as a ridiculous waste of time. She had sat in circles with her finger on an upturned glass, had listened to visiting mystics and politely applauded their demented worldviews, had been presented with unreadable books and meaningless fragments of stone. Somehow, though, she must have made the correct admiring noises, because within a month Avery had recommended to Carl Sanford, the Lodge’s urbane and reclusive leader, that she be inducted into the inner circles of the Order of the Silver Twilight.

Several of Diana’s most regular and well-paying customers were Lodge members. She did not refuse.

That was the time, though, when the weekly meetings began to take on a different hue. Diana was given a costume to wear, a hooded hessian robe embroidered with strangely disturbing symbols. Instead of pretending to converse with the recently departed or fantasizing about past lives, she found herself listening to Sanford and his acolytes discussing the worship of ancient, alien deities. And while on Avery’s twisted lips the names of those demons sounded false and foolish, when Sanford talked, Diana shivered. He had a way of invoking those unpronounceable creatures that sounded utterly real.

Finally, there came a night when Avery led her to a new chamber within the Lodge. There, amid high vaulted arches of black stone, lit by a thousand guttering candles, stood the collected second rank of the Order. At their head was Carl Sanford in his plain black robes, and before him stood a small brown goat, tethered to an iron loop in the stone floor and bleating in exhausted animal panic.

Sanford had handed her a long knife, very politely, holding onto the tip and presenting her with the handle. “The heart, if you please.”

Perhaps they expected her to flinch, or refuse. Certainly there was a look of amused challenge in Sanford’s eyes. But Diana had grown up on a farm, and she had put beasts to the blade before.

So she showed them how to hold the animal still, how to flense away the skin and spread the bones, where to cut and how deep to go. She did it so well that parts of the goat were still moving, even as its heart shivered to a stop in her hand.

* * *

Diana took the Northside Line trolleybus to get to the east of town. Half the seats on the bus were empty when she got on, and by the time she reached her destination she was riding almost alone. It was not, she had learned, considered a good thing to be out late at night in Arkham. This was perhaps less true in the more central districts, where one might find company or entertainment well into the hours of darkness. But in the outskirts and the older parts of town, most Arkham denizens hurried home once the sun was gone.

It was even colder now, the air damp and heavy. There were a few people about, hunched, featureless shapes scurrying along beneath rows of lit windows. The streetlamps were a chain of hazy yellow globes stretching off into the gloom, their light barely touching the sidewalk. As Diana passed under each one, a blurry shadow would reach from behind her, vanish under her shoes, and emerge ahead once again to point her way.

She watched each shadow, making sure it was not joined by a companion.

The trolleybus had deposited her on the wrong side of the road. Diana could see a wide, blocky structure looming ahead of her, a vertical grid of windows glowing in the misty dark. She gripped the handles of the carpetbag tightly.

The roads were not quite empty, even so late. Diana waited to cross, hearing the clatter and groan of automobiles, seeing their lights draw close, swing past her, and vanish. One of them seemed to slow as it reached her, the driver’s face turning her way. At least, she thought it was a face. The grey air robbed it of detail, made it a floating pale thing that bobbed against the glass like a fleshy balloon.

It was the last vehicle for a while. Diana hesitated at the curb, suddenly unsure, but then gathered her resolve and ran across to the opposite sidewalk. A moment later she was at the door of the police station, pushing her way into warmth and smoky light.

* * *

Those last few weeks at the Lodge almost broke Diana Stanley.

She was now an accepted acolyte of the second rank, and as such, required to take part in rites so foul that she could barely recall them without weeping. Every meeting brought a new horror, a fresh debasement. She read guttural syllables from books that made her want to scrub her skin raw as soon as she touched them. She knelt naked in hidden chambers within the Lodge and howled prayers to vast and mindless gods. She laid her hands on obscene stone idols, feeling their sheer age thrill up through her fingertips like electricity.

And after each meeting she would return to her rooms, shaking with forbidden knowledge, and just about make it to the sink before vomiting in revulsion.

She was in the company of madmen, there could be no doubt of it now. Her fellow acolytes had fallen to Sanford’s disturbing charms years earlier, and they were in thrall to him. The enthusiasm with which they abandoned themselves to whatever sickening rite the man devised was a clear sign to Diana that these people were past saving. It was a wonder they were able to function in normal society at all.

Diana was unsure which frightened her more. The idea of what depravities the others might get up to outside the Lodge, or the thought that, given enough time under Sanford’s command, she would end up just like them.

If she could have left, she would have done. But she had seen too much, learned too much. They would never let her walk away with that knowledge. Diana was already certain that Sanford was having her watched, both inside the Lodge and out.

Perhaps that was why he included her in the Summoning. To show her what he was capable of.

Diana had known something was different about that particular rite almost as soon as it had begun. There was a charge to the air in the Inner Sanctum, a kind of greasy prickling that roamed over her bare and painted skin as she knelt. The other acolytes could feel it too, she could see it in their eyes, in the sweat that dripped from their bodies.

Her heart yammering, fear clutching her throat in its familiar slick-cold grip, Diana howled out her chants, this time relegated to the circle of worshippers. It was Sanford who busied himself at the altar, teasing open some chained and shrieking thing that had once been a large dog.

Avery was there, too, standing to one side and leaning heavily on his cane. His scarred face danced in the fluttering candlelight, wet with lust. Diana tried to watch him from the corner of her eye, but his image kept blurring. She was light-headed, faint with hunger and horror. If she had eaten before coming to the Lodge, her belly would have rebelled by now.

In the midst of the chanting, the dog stopped screaming.

Sanford turned, a wide iron bowl held in his bloodied hands. The Sanctum fell silent. He stepped through the circle of acolytes, dropped to one knee, and tipped a hot stew of blood and entrails out onto the chamber floor.

“Rise,” he breathed.

The air exploded.

Diana was bowled over by the blast, crumpling backward onto the cold stone. The Sanctum had been thrust into darkness, every candle blown out at once, snuffed in an instant by the shockwave. For a moment, Diana wondered if she had been blinded.

Then she righted herself, drawing back instinctively from the clammy, clawing hands of the other acolytes, and saw that there was still a light in the chamber. Not candlelight, but something altogether worse: a rising colorless glow that was seething out from nowhere, growing steadily brighter, writhing and leaping as though from some invisible fire.

And in the midst of it, a shape had lurched up from the center of the circle.

Looking back, Diana had never been able to remember precisely what she saw in that pulsing light, and she considered that a blessing. Perhaps she had not seen enough of it, or maybe there was a part of her mind, as yet unused to such sights, that had simply rejected the thing’s image, purging it as a stomach purges poison. In addition, the thing didn’t last for long. The universe must have found it as foul as she did, and simply spat it back out again.

All she could recall, in the moments when she could not stop herself from doing so, was the way it moved. The sinuous, ceaseless cavorting of it, waving and whirling like a decapitated snake, like a man with every bone shattered to powder, and yet pulled back to his broken feet and forced to dance.

* * *

The lobby of the police station was all dark varnished wood and frosted glass, lit by grimy bulbs under conical shades and reading lamps on the desks ranged along one wall. The floor was red tile, stained in places and worn smooth in others, and at the lobby’s far end a flight of grey marble stairs curled away to the upper floors. There was little noise, just footfalls and muted chatter, and the staccato rapping of typewriters. It smelled of cigarette smoke and leather and worry.

There was a drunk at the duty sergeant’s desk, held swaying between two uniformed cops and attempting to slur out his name and address. The details he was giving were lies, Diana could hear it in his voice, but she resisted the urge to correct him. The cops probably knew it too, and even if they didn’t, acting smart in front of them would do her no favors. Diana hated to admit it, but there were times when the best tactic was to keep one’s eyes down and play the damsel in distress.

Eventually the drunk grew tired of trying to get his lies straight, or perhaps he just grew tired. He sagged on his feet and the uniforms dragged him away, chuckling. Diana stepped up to the desk in his place, setting her bag down. “Good evening, Sergeant.”

“Ma’am.” He didn’t look up. Diana could hear the soft scratching of his pen as he wrote in a logbook.

“May I speak with Sheriff Engle, please?”

“Sheriff’s indisposed.” He paused in his scribbling, frowned at something he had written, and crossed it through. “You want to report a crime?”

“No. I mean yes, I do. But I have to speak to the sheriff.”

He put a period at the end of a sentence, hard, as if drilling the pen down into the paper. “Sheriff’s indisposed.”

“Sergeant, this is very—”

“Important.” He looked up and fixed her with a steady gaze. “Ain’t got no doubt of that, otherwise you’d not be out this late in this sort of weather. And I understand that you’ve got a mind to speak to Sheriff Engle and him alone. But I’ve told you twice, he ain’t available to speak to you or to anyone.”

Diana fought down a surge of anger. “So what am I supposed to do?”

“What you’re supposed to do, ma’am, is to ask yourself whether what you have to tell Mr. Engle is important enough to relate to any of our other fine officers, of which I can see at least five in this very lobby. Or whether you just want to leave off until you can get your way.”

Diana realized that she was gripping the edge of his desk very tightly. She took a breath, forced herself to relax, and pried her fingers loose, mentally cursing herself. “Do you have any idea when the sheriff might be free?”

“I do not.” His head dropped again.

A sickening feeling of claustrophobia washed over her.

She had been foolish to believe things would go smoothly, that was obvious to her now. If only it had been so obvious a little earlier, she thought sourly, then she might have formulated a backup plan. Instead she had stumbled out into the darkness, weak and afraid and entirely unprepared, with only a single aim in mind and not a thought spared as to what to do if things went awry.

No better than the goat. Bleating and waiting for the knife.

She couldn’t leave. The idea of walking out of the police station and making her way back home, carpetbag in hand, was terrifying. If she put the bag back under her bed she would never take it out again. It had taken all her resolve to carry it as far as she had.

One way or another she would tell her story tonight, or never tell it.

A quick survey of the lobby confirmed the sergeant’s numbers. Two uniformed officers were chatting quietly on a bench near the door, while another was climbing the stairs, weighed down by an armful of folders. A very young cop was at his desk, typing hesitantly, as if the keys beneath his fingertips were hot. And another was standing over a young couple in black, taking notes while the woman sobbed.

The man’s hand hovered over his companion’s shoulder, wanting to comfort and yet reluctant to touch. Diana looked at him, despising his indecision.

No, not his. Her own. “Very well, then. I’d like to speak to the most senior officer who is not indisposed.”

Shouts, sudden and incoherent, erupted from behind one of the side doors.

Diana swung around. She saw a shadow behind the door’s frosted pane, and then there was a brutal, splintering impact. The door hammered open, hard enough to send the pane spinning free.

A man had shoulder-slammed it from behind. He was already running for the main doors, hatless, white shirt and dark pants, florid face open around a howl of exhilarated rage. A blur of speed.

Vaguely, Diana caught a suggestion of dark shapes emerging from the doorway, the pane shattering as it hit the floor. She set down the carpetbag and put out a foot, kicking it across the tiles.

The man ran into it at full speed, sprawled, flew down onto the floor. Diana heard the breath go out of him, the solid noise of his skull connecting with worn red tile. He tried to scramble up, but then injury overwhelmed momentum and he sagged again, eyes open, blinking and mumbling.

Two uniformed cops, fresh from the doorway, skated to a halt on either side of him and dragged him up. Diana saw the flash of a nightstick, but the man barely even registered the impact.

“Son of a bitch!” An older man was standing in the middle of the lobby, hands on ample hips. “How in the hell did that happen, Dingby?”

The cop with the nightstick swung it again, not as hard this time, into the back of his captive’s head. “Sorry, Sheriff. Wasn’t watching him.”

“Damn right you weren’t. If it wasn’t for this little lady, you’d be chasing his skinny ass all the way down to the river!” The older man tipped his head to Diana. “Thank you kindly, miss.”

“My pleasure.” The cops were dragging the runaway past her, back toward the open door. “Excuse me, but you wouldn’t be Sheriff Engle, by any chance?”

“I would.” He squinted. “Diana Stanley, right?”

A knot formed in Diana’s gut. She’d had only the most minimal dealings with the police since arriving in Arkham. There was no reason for Engle to know who she was. “Yes,” she said warily. “Yes, that’s right.”

His face folded in a broad smile. “Thought so! My Irma buys from your place all the time. Walked her home from there once or twice, saw you through the window. So what can I do for you, Miss Stanley?”

The knot shrank, just slightly. “Sheriff, I know you’re busy. But might I trouble you for a few minutes of your time?”

“Reckon you’ve earned them. And young Flannery there will be cooling off in a cell for the next little while. What’s on your mind?”

She picked up the bag, hopefully for the last time. “Perhaps we could speak somewhere private. This is a little…complicated.”

* * *

Diana had been able to hold herself together for a while after the Summoning, but she wasn’t strong enough to keep the façade of normalcy up for long. The reality of what she had seen was overwhelming. And on the day that the store’s new sign was to be delivered, it had all gotten too much.

She’d made it through the morning before acknowledging to herself that she could no longer stay behind the counter. Diana had owned and run the little store for almost two years, and never had the voices of her customers seemed so jarring, their concerns so banal. So she had told Millie to mind the place while she went out to clear her head, remembering to take the switchblade but forgetting more mundane essentials like gloves, a scarf, or a hat.

The cold had driven her to the diner. And once inside, she’d had the ridiculous notion that ordering a sandwich would make her feel better. Perhaps it would have done, had her hands not been shaking too badly to hold it.

It was while she was prodding at the meal that Diana realized she was being watched. Over in the corner booth, past Patty Putnam and her latest extramarital experiment, she’d spotted a small, mousey young redhead looking at her over some kind of folder. The girl was pathetically obvious, hiding behind owlish spectacles and playing the student when she was plainly five years too old. She couldn’t have looked more out of place if she’d tried.

Had Diana not been so unsettled she would have confronted the girl where she sat, maybe even shown her a trick or two with the switchblade. Instead she had scurried away, shaking, back out into the cold, sharp air. It had taken her two entire circuits of the block before she regained enough composure to safely head back to Huntress and Millie’s inquisitive gaze.

Humiliating as the event had been, it had crystallized Diana’s resolve. Before that time in the diner she had been unsure of how to act. Now she knew that she was being watched, her path was clear, even though it would probably lead her into darkness.

* * *

Diana told her story to Sheriff Engle and his deputy, Dingby, in a small, windowless room furnished only with a plain wooden desk and two chairs. Engle sat, while Dingby stood with one hand resting suggestively on the handle of his nightstick.

Most of what she told them was true. She kept some elements of the story vague, and deliberately altered others. Her descriptions of the Lodge’s rites were almost complete, although she described them as Satanic rather than revealing their true focus. She emphasized the cruelty of the animal butchery, and hinted—as Sanford himself had done—that livestock was only the beginning.

There were, of course, some parts of the story Diana left out altogether. She had no desire to wind up in the asylum.

She talked for a long time, and only broke down twice. Otherwise she delivered the story as calmly as she was able, finally ending the tale by opening the carpetbag and laying out her evidence on the desk: the knife, a small but deeply upsetting fetish she had stolen from a lesser chamber, and her brown robe, still sticky with goat blood.

By the end of it, Engle was frowning and pale, running his hand reflexively back through his thinning hair. Dingby, beside him, couldn’t stop looking at the fetish.

“Is this for real?” Engle growled.

Diana nodded. Telling the story out loud had been harder than she’d been expecting. She didn’t quite trust herself to speak.

“Carl Sanford. God in heaven. I can’t…” Engle got up slowly. “Damn. Dingby?”

The younger man didn’t speak. For a moment Engle shared his silence, then lost patience and slapped his shoulder. “Dingby, come on!”

“What?”

“Damn, son, get your ass in motion! We’re paying a visit to the Silver Twilight Lodge.”

* * *

They took the evidence she had brought, including the bag, and left her alone in the room with her thoughts and a promise of fresh coffee and a ride home. Diana accepted the offer gratefully. Her throat was dry from talking and occasional sobbing, and the story had taken longer to tell than she had planned. It was very late now. She didn’t even know if the trolleybus would be running.

She felt strange, empty, as though telling the story had scoured her raw from the inside. It occurred to her, now it was out in the open, that she had no real idea what to do. But then, what could she do? Other than stay as far away from the Lodge as possible, and hope that Engle could lock Sanford away for good—either in prison or in the most squalid depths of Arkham Asylum, Diana didn’t much care which. As long as it was enough to stop him.

No one came back into the room.

Diana sat where she was for quite a while. To start with, it didn’t trouble her to think that she had been forgotten. If Engle was as affected by her story as he appeared to be, he might have raced up to the Lodge without sparing the time to inform anyone of her needs. The sheriff was no longer young. Older men, Diana knew only too well, are prone to forget.

Eventually, though, even this fantasy palled. Diana got up from her chair, pulled the door open, and peered around it.

The corridor beyond was empty. “Hello?”

There was no answer. Diana stepped into the corridor and began to walk back toward the lobby. Her footsteps seemed very loud on the tile floor.

The sounds she had heard on her way in were gone. There were no voices, no clattering typewriters, no footsteps other than her own. The corridor was eerily quiet.

The door into the lobby was still damaged, its pane missing. When she reached it and looked through, she saw a glitter on the tiles. The broken glass was still there, untouched.

The lobby was empty.

“Hello? Anyone?” Diana pushed the door open. The silence beat at her ears. All she could hear was the hammering of her pulse.

Something moved at the edge of her vision. She turned, fast, her shoe crunching on broken glass, and saw the duty sergeant sliding back behind his desk.

The wash of relief she felt at the sight of him almost put her on the floor. She went over to the desk as fast as decorum would allow. “Hello again, Sergeant.”

“Ma’am.” His voice was cold and even.

Diana blinked, a little surprised at his tone. “Where did everyone go?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss that. Are you done with the sheriff?”

The feeling of relief was evaporating, fading in the face of a nagging disquiet. The duty sergeant had been belligerent before, but now there was an icy disdain in his voice, as if he suddenly found her poisonous. She wondered what Engle and his subordinate had said about her while she waited dutifully in the windowless room.

Perhaps their display of concern had been an act all along.

At that moment, Diana wanted very much to be out of the police station. She didn’t care if the trolley was running or not. “I suppose I am. Thank you for your time, Sergeant.”

“My pleasure,” he said flatly. “Oh, and ma’am?”

“Hm?”

He reached under the desk, and hauled out something large and tan. “Don’t forgot your bag.”

Diana took an involuntary step back. He was holding the carpetbag out to her, its sides bulging, straps tightly buckled, just as it had been when she had walked in with it. “What…what’s that doing here?” she gasped.

“You tell me. It’s your bag.”

“But the sheriff… It’s evidence, he’ll need it…”

“I don’t believe he will.” His hand opened, and the bag dropped solidly onto the tiles at Diana’s feet. “Best be getting home now, Miss Stanley. It’s getting late.”

For a moment, all she could do was stare at the bag in horror. And then, feeling as though she were picking up an angry snake, she reached down and took it by its handles.

The robe and the knife and the fetish were still inside. She didn’t need to open it to know that. They were probably packed in just as they had been before she had left the store, as if she had never taken them out.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Goodnight.”

“Goodbye, Miss Stanley. Take care now.”

She pushed the doors open and went through them, into the cold and the dark, and wondered if she’d ever be warm again.

Chapter Three: Hidden Depths

Phillip Avery’s new flesh always seemed to choose the worst moments to turn against him.

He was, when the latest rebellion occurred, in the Grand Hall of the Arkham Chamber of Commerce, attending one of the board’s semi-regular evening functions. As usual, he wished he was very far away. Nearly the whole board was there, gathering in slow clusters around the marble floor with their wives and husbands in attendance, their assistants and secretaries waiting, watching, keeping just out of earshot but always in sight. A thin haze of cigar smoke greyed the air, and a string quartet played quiet chamber music while the light from a dozen crystal chandeliers set the jewels and the gold and the false smiles sparkling.

If there had been any reasonable chance of refusing the invitation, Avery would have done so, but the public face of his business demanded that, on occasion, he leave the comforting seclusion of the shadows and step out into the light. And so, scowling, he had dressed in the most flattering of his hand-tailored suits, put on eyeglasses with darkened lenses, and gone to be among the pretty people like a rotting corpse at a beauty pageant.

There had been a meal, which Avery had not eaten, and a selection of morally acceptable drinks, which he had not touched. Now he stood, leaning heavily on his ebony walking cane, while a young man in a frankly appalling brown suit tried to interest him in a business deal which would benefit two Men Of The World Such As Themselves.

“I have a supplier in Paris,” said the man, whose name was Odell. “Paris in France.”

Avery did not consider himself a man of the world, at least not in the sense Odell did. He barely considered himself a man. However, for want of anything better to do, he let the fellow babble on. Odell had been topping up his iced tea with something from a hip flask for the past half hour, and Avery wanted to see how long it would take for the man to topple.

“Oh,” he replied quietly. “That Paris.”

If Odell noticed the mocking tone in Avery’s voice, or the twist of his upper lip, neither made him pause. He probably thought that they were a result of Avery’s injuries, a conclusion reached by most people who spoke to him. They were usually right, but not always.

“You’ll understand that this isn’t your usual collection of erotic etchings, Mr. Avery. That’s ten cents a dozen in this day and age. No, I’m talking about quality photography, sir. Items for the discerning gentleman.”

“Really.”

“Absolutely. These are publications which simply cannot be acquired on this side of the water. There is a puritan streak here in the States which just doesn’t exist in Europe. You’d be surprised to discover what occurs in the private galleries of Paris and Amsterdam, Mr. Avery.”

“Oh, I’m sure I would.”

“Let me tell you…” Odell leaned closer, swaying perceptibly. “Movies, sir. Of a most specific kind…”

“Naughty films?” Avery put a hand on the other man’s shoulder, partly as a conspiratorial gesture but mainly in order to ease the man further away. Odell’s breath, liberally enhanced with liquor from the hip flask, was becoming offensive. Avery already had a headache. “Mr. Odell, wherever did you get the idea I dealt in blue material?”

Odell blinked. “I was told, sir, that Avery Imports was the place to go for rare and exotic items.”

“You should have requested a catalog, my friend. I deal in fine art, rare books, antiquities. Nothing that would frighten the horses.”

“I’m sure I read—”

“The word is esoteric, Mr. Odell. Easy mistake to…”

His voice trailed off. Odell’s suit was changing from brown to a febrile, flickering purple.

He stepped back, away from the younger man. It wasn’t just Odell that was transforming. The other guests were darkening, too, their outlines growing smoky and indistinct.

His vision was being altered. What had begun as a mild headache was now becoming a dull thudding in his right eye, a pressure, as if something was moving behind it. A slithering in the socket.

Deep in his ribcage, his vitals lurched.

Odell was frowning in concern. “Are you all right, sir?”

Avery managed a nod. A sickening heat was spreading up from his core, a twitching, fibrillating weakness spiraling into the back of his throat. He reached out, took the glass from Odell’s hand and tipped the contents down his gullet in one smooth, practiced swallow.

Iced tea and scotch whiskey coursed down into him, fire meeting fire. It freed his spasming throat slightly. “Forgive me,” he croaked. “I think we’ll have to cut this discussion short.”

“Of course.” Odell was glancing nervously around. For a moment Avery thought that the man might have been looking for help, but then he realized Odell was concerned only with the reactions of the other board members.

He was already drawing stares. From behind his dark glasses, Avery glared back at those watching him, cursing their attention. He hated being looked at even when he felt well. Now, with the pain locking his ribs into an immobile cage and the weakness and nausea threatening to overwhelm him, the pitying glances being thrown his way were more than he could bear.

A shadow appeared at his side, and a heartbeat later he felt hands on him, steadying, guiding him backward toward a chair. He sat gratefully and looked up into Nightingale’s strange, pale eyes.

“You gonna be okay, boss?”

“No.” Avery shook his head. “Get the car.”

“Can you breathe okay?”

“Sam, just hurry. Please.”

Odell was still there, standing awkwardly to the side. “Mr. Odell, we shall have to reschedule.”

“I fully understand. Perhaps next week? I can be free on—”

Abruptly, Nightingale was standing between Avery and Odell, his head tilted slightly to the side. Avery had seen that tilt before, and hoped Odell would have enough sense to go away.

“Another time, sir,” Nightingale said flatly.

“Wait, I have a card.” Odell started fishing around inside his jacket. “My telephone number. Or perhaps I could arrange an appointment?”

Nightingale put his face very close to Odell’s. “Another time. Sir.”

Samuel Nightingale had been Avery’s personal assistant for seven years. He was a slender man, pale, with jet black hair slicked back over his small, bird-like skull, and rather easy for people to ignore. That was, until they looked into his eyes, and caught a measure of what lay behind them.

That was usually when they found another place to be. Odell was no exception. Had the pain not been so intense, Avery might have smiled to see the man scurrying off so hurriedly.

“You gonna be okay for a few?” Nightingale’s attention was fully back on Avery again. Or at least, that’s what it might have looked like to the uninformed.

He nodded. “Side door.”

“You got it.”

The man darted away. Avery closed his eyes and sagged back into the chair, very much aware of what he must have looked like. The suit was tailored to disguise the twist of his spine while he was standing, perhaps sitting carefully, but his position now would defeat it.

He could already hear people whispering about shrapnel. That gave him a small, if perverse, degree of comfort. While their pity sickened him, at least they were pitying a war hero, crippled in battle, and thus their attentions were focused on a man who did not exist.

* * *

Nightingale drove fast, but he didn’t throw the Lincoln around. Avery was thankful for that; it meant he didn’t have to steady himself in the back seat while he got his jacket off.

There was a compartment in the back of the driver’s seat, an addition that Avery had commissioned when having the car built. Once he had discarded his jacket he unlocked it, his fingers slippery and numb on the handle, and pulled it open. The panel that hid the compartment folded down to form a small table.

Avery took the medical kit from within, and prized off the lid. “How much longer?”

“Not far. How you doing back there?”

“I’ll let you know.” Avery had his right sleeve rolled up and was tying a rubber tube around his bicep. It wasn’t easy; his vision was distorted, lights lurching and flaring as the landscape rushed by, and the weakness made every movement an effort. He was shivering, sweating, his skull pounding and his guts in spasm. And he wasn’t even sure that what he was doing would be enough.

While the pain was bad, it wasn’t the worst thing happening to him. Under Avery’s shirt, on the right side of his chest, something was moving.

On his way out to the car he had clamped his left arm around himself, a reflex to stave off the nausea and the fire under his ribs, and he had felt the twitch and squirm under his fingers, as though some slithering thing was nesting beneath his skin. It was still moving, even now; he could feel the way it tugged on the surrounding muscles, how it itched and wriggled deep within his torso.

Most of his episodes could be fended off with narcotics. But not all.

The Lincoln had been racing through woodland for the past few minutes, along the narrow road which snaked up the shallow flank of Harpers Hill. Now it was slowing. The Spaulding estate was surrounded by a high wall, accessible only through a gatehouse, and Nightingale was easing back on the gas to give the hired men there time to open up and let them through.

Avery didn’t look up to see them. He was concentrating on pushing a long hypodermic needle into his vein.

There was a spike of pain as the needle slid under his skin, absurdly sharp given the discomfort he was already feeling. Avery drew the brass plunger of the syringe up a little, then eased it down.

Ice flooded into his arm, followed by a numbing warmth.

Avery sagged back as the morphine took hold. Dimly, as though through a layer of thick, warm blankets, he felt the Lincoln’s tires crunch onto gravel, then a dull jolt as the car slipped up between the gateposts and onto the long, winding driveway that lead up the hill to Spaulding House.

Nightingale glanced back at him. “That hit the spot?”

“It’s a start.” The visual distortion was beginning to recede, along with the pounding behind his eyes. Avery let his head roll to the side until he felt the cool touch of the window against his skin. Beyond the glass, the hillocked grounds of the estate spread out into darkness, surrounding the puddle of light that contained Spaulding House.

The house had been big when Avery had acquired it: a three-story colonial mansion with a tall gambrel roof and white marble pillars flanking the door. Now, after years of additions and improvements, Spaulding House had tripled in area, sprawling out over the crest of Harpers Hill into an asymmetrical maze of lodgings and offices and storage.

It was no longer a pretty building, but that suited Avery perfectly. He wasn’t as he had originally been designed, either.

“Hullo,” said Nightingale. “We’ve got company.”

“What do you mean?” It was hard not to let the words slur. Avery’s eyelids were already drooping.

“Black sedan, parked out front. You want I should skirt around?”

A cool edge of worry brushed against the morphine haze, like a fin under water. Avery sat up straighter, feeling for the knot in the rubber tube. “No. Pull in behind.”

By the time Nightingale had stopped the car Avery’s sleeve was back in place. He left the jacket where it lay on the seat beside him. It would take more time than he had to get it on right over his uneven shoulders. The driver of the black sedan was already out and waiting for him.

Nightingale opened the door for him, and he climbed out, leaning heavily on the cane. At least he could stand upright now.

The sedan’s driver was walking toward him. It was a woman, uniformed, her skin gleaming very white under the mansion’s lights. “You are Phillip Avery.”

Her words had a liquid, croaking quality, and each was said individually, as if learned in isolation from all others.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“You have an appointment with Mr. Carl Sanford.”

The edge of worry turned into a icy blade and jabbed Avery in the gut. “Now?”

“You have an appointment with—”

“All right! I understand, damn it.” Avery hated the way her eyes protruded in slightly different directions, and the fact that neither of them looked at him while she spoke. “Where is he?”

“Mr. Carl Sanford is in the study.”

“In my study,” Avery corrected, but he knew he was wasting breath. “Fine. Nightingale?”

“Right here, boss.” The man was standing precisely the correct distance away from the driver, watching her unerringly.

“Make sure no one goes near until he’s gone. Understand? No one. Clear that side of the house.”

Nightingale nodded, and slipped silently away. Avery stood where he was for a few seconds, then took a deep breath and walked, as steadily as he was able, into the house.

Carl Sanford was waiting for him when he got to the study. He had been sitting in one of the leather armchairs facing Avery’s desk, but he stood up when Avery arrived. “Phillip.” He smiled. “It’s good to see you up and about. I heard you had to make a swift exit from the Chamber Ball.”

“Mr. Sanford.” Avery didn’t attempt to shake the other man’s hand. Their discourses were always polite in the extreme, but Sanford would never allow himself to be touched. “I did, I’m afraid.”

“The foie gras a little rich for you?”

“Something like that.” Avery skirted the desk, then gestured at Sanford’s chair, making sure the other man sat before he did.

“Please forgive the intrusion.” Sanford sat in the armchair as though it were a throne, straight-backed and perfectly poised. “I know it’s late.”

“Not at all. Always a pleasure to have you up at Spaulding.”

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Sanford glanced around the study. “You’ve continued to improve on the place, I see. More offices here than last time, is that right?”

“The whole south wing now. It makes more sense to have that part of the business close by. Now I only have to go down to the docks when a shipment comes in.”

“Very sensible. One shouldn’t dirty one’s hands unless it’s strictly necessary, don’t you agree?”

Sanford’s quiet, private smile hadn’t slipped. Avery didn’t doubt that the man could keep it on his lips all night. He’d seen Sanford wear that same half-polite, half-mocking expression through hours of hard ritual. Even when it came to sacrifices, Sanford would most often smile as he used the blade.

It was not a pleasant smile. Sanford wore it with the air of a man who was amused by something that no one else could see, something utterly horrifying to anyone but him.

There was a decanter on Avery’s desk. He took two crystal tumblers from a drawer and placed them on the leather surface. “I trust you’ll join me in a drink?”

“Naughty.” Sanford watched him pour a measure of scotch into each glass, his dark eyes intent, like a snake watching a mouse. “Still, all things in moderation.”

Avery had always found Sanford serpentine. There was something too neat about him, too precise and perfectly turned out. When he moved, reaching out to take the glass, he did so sinuously, as though unburdened by bones or joints. When he spoke, his words were quiet and sibilant.

His skin, his hair, even the perfectly tailored suit he wore, all were very slightly too glossy. As if he were built for predation, for the silent hunt and the sudden ambush.

All in all, Avery would have rather sat across the desk from a hungry cobra. “So, is there something you wanted to discuss? An item you need shipped in for the Lodge?”

Sanford seemed to weigh up the question. Then: “There’s a woman.”

“Ah.” Avery felt a surge of unease that even the morphine couldn’t dull. “One of ours?”

“Of course.”

Avery wasn’t surprised. This would not be the first time that Carl Sanford had expressed an interest in one of the Order’s prettier initiates, and it was usually Avery who had to tidy up afterward. There was a patch of scrubland at the rear of Spaulding House reserved for that very purpose. “May I ask who?”

Sanford made a dismissive gesture. “Oh, you know. The brunette. Your little shopkeeper.”

“Diana Stanley.”

“Stanley.” Sanford leaned forward to pick up his glass, his eyes never leaving Avery’s. “Yes, that’s the one. A favorite of yours, I believe.”

Avery cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t say that.”

In fact, there was rather more to the matter than he preferred to admit. Against his better nature, Avery felt rather fondly toward Diana Stanley.

He was not vain or foolish enough to imagine a liaison between them, even during the most frenzied of the Order’s rituals. Ugly men—or at least those who are truly aware of their ugliness—do not entertain such notions. But he had seen potential in the woman, during their dealings at the Chamber of Commerce; a coldness and a ruthless pragmatism that could, under the correct instruction, be useful to the Order.

Frothing fanatics were easy to find. The lower ranks of the Order seethed with drooling thugs and borderline madmen, human trash whose minds crumbled at their first sight of the Truth. Avery had been certain that Diana would prove to be of far sterner stuff, and so had personally eased her way into the second rank. A wasted effort, it seemed now. If Sanford wanted her then he would have her: as head of the Order that was his right. But to see Diana with her mind and body demolished by Sanford’s ghastly appetites, begging for the cool touch of Avery’s revolver against her forehead as the women he had tidied away before had done, well…that would be a waste.

“Don’t be modest, Phillip,” Sanford smiled. “She showed quite extraordinary promise. Made all the right noises. Up until the moment she went to the police.”

Sanford’s tone hadn’t altered. The words were so calm, so softly spoken that for a moment or two Avery completely missed them. Their import crept up on him slowly, through the worry and the dull pain and the morphine.

“She went to the police? Dear God. What did she tell them?”

“A slightly edited version of everything she’s seen and heard in the past few months, according to my sources.” Sanford shrugged. “Don’t fret, Phillip. She won’t do any lasting damage. I’ve taken care of things in that regard.”

“How?”

Sanford smiled more widely, and laid a finger to the side of his nose. “That would be telling. Let’s just say I’ve been subtle.”

Avery nodded grimly. “All right. Where is she now?”

“I have no idea. Scuttling off home, I suspect.” Sanford must have noticed Avery’s expression at that point, because he chuckled. “Alive, yes. Oh, she can’t trouble us for the moment. But she’s resourceful. If we leave her rattling around unheeded for too long there’s no telling the damage she could do.” Sanford lifted his glass, and gazed at it absently, tipping it left and right. “You’ll just have to make sure she ceases to rattle.”

“Me?”

“Of course.” Sanford seemed almost puzzled at the question. “Phillip, I’ve done my part. You, however, have a duty to the Order.” He took a sip of the whiskey. “I took her in on your recommendation, after all.”

“But she’s already been to the police, damn it! We’ve been seen together at the Chamber of Commerce, God knows how many times. If anything happens to her now it’ll come straight back to me!”

“I don’t want your excuses, Phillip. I’ve made my position clear.” Sanford raised an eyebrow. “Besides, if you don’t have the stomach, you can always get Mr. Stone to do it.”

Avery froze. The last warmth afforded him by the morphine vanished, leaving him swathed in freezing, pin-sharp sensation. Suddenly he was very much aware of how silent the study had become.

“I don’t know who you mean,” he said.

“Phillip, please.” Sanford’s eyes were hooded. “Don’t try to lie to me, it’s insulting. You can fool the serial inbreeders that populate this town easily enough, but you have no secrets from me. Do try to remember that.”

Anger surged up inside Avery’s chest, tightening his throat. “My association with Mr. Stone—”

“—is the only reason I let you through my front door.” Sanford rose to his feet. “I don’t intend to debate this, Phillip. This is your mess.” He put the glass down on Avery’s desk. “It’s time for you to wipe it up.”

Avery raised his own drink and drained it bitterly. “Very well. For the Order.”

“Good show.” Sanford’s smile had returned, as calm and lazy as it had ever been. “Oh, and please try to explain the concept of discretion to your little friend. Dealing with Edward Hopkirk was an unpleasant distraction, and one I’d rather not repeat just now. Keep him in the shadows, hm?”

* * *

There was nothing more to be said. Sanford left Spaulding House by the front door, his driver holding an umbrella up for him as he stalked out. It had started to rain, and the wind was rising.

Avery watched the sedan’s lights disappear down the driveway, then turned on his heel and went back inside to see Mr. Stone.

He took the elevator down into what had once been the mansion’s wine cellar. Now the wine was gone, the bottles smashed and their contents allowed to run into the ground to appease the local puritans, and the cellar lay dark and empty.

If anyone stepped out of the elevator at that point, they would find the cellar somewhat less empty than it seemed, but Avery had no intention of doing that. He flipped up the concealed panel under the elevator’s controls, pushed the button hidden there, and sent the rattling cage down another fifty feet into the Arkham bedrock.

He took off his eyeglasses on the way. Mr. Stone would not be troubled by what lay behind them.

The elevator clattered to a halt, jolting hard as it locked into place. The lurch of it drew a grunt of pain from Avery. The morphine was wearing off.

Deep in his chest, the squirming had begun again.

“Mr. Stone?” The chamber beyond the elevator cage was cool and dark. Avery slid the folding doors open and stepped out onto cold rock. “Are you there?”

After several seconds of silence, he was answered by a dry rustling from the shadows.

He moved toward it. Around him, shapes defined themselves as his night vision adapted: the shelves and the tables, the racks of tools, the things in tanks that twitched and shivered and sobbed silent, bloodied tears.

“I need your help, Stone.” He felt his way to the table, the one he had lain on so many times before, and dragged himself up onto it. “Something’s happening to me. Worse than usual.”

The rustling drew closer. “The outer veils are removed.”

“What? Oh, the clothes. Of course.”

Slowly, and with trembling fingers, Avery began to undo the buttons of his shirt. The trembling was in part due to weakness and pain, but mostly trepidation. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what lay beneath it.

All his choices were gone, though. They had been for a very long time. He stripped open the last buttons and laid his torso bare.

Light stabbed down from above the table. Avery squinted down at himself, and cried out.

The sight of his new flesh was no surprise to him. It still replaced the skin on almost the entire right quarter of his chest, just as it had for years: pulpy and grey-pink, veined with a pale filigree and gleaming like exposed gristle. It throbbed and pulsed subtly as he watched it, a rhythm wholly unconnected to his own heartbeat but so much a part of him now that he could no longer imagine being without it.

Strands of the new flesh still curved up behind his shoulder, wrenching his spine askew, curling up across the back of his head before vanishing into a fissure below his left ear. More seethed down over his hip, into his right leg. None of this was new to him, although the slow growth of the new flesh seemed to have accelerated in the past year or so.

What he had not seen before was the fat blister of twitching, translucent flesh, a sac as long as his hand and half as thick, nestling between his fifth and sixth right ribs like a vast, vile grub.

“Dear God,” Avery breathed. “Stone, what is that?”

“Metamorphosis.”

In the bright, bluish light from above the table, the pallid contents of the sac moved fitfully—a whitish, angular thing, folded back on itself, hinged and clawed like the vestigial leg of some vast insect.

Avery moaned. “What are you doing to me?”

There was a scraping in the dark as Mr. Stone turned away. “It experiences a natural process.”

“Natural? Natural?” He gestured downward. “Look at this, Stone. This isn’t natural! It’s taking me over. I can feel it behind my eyes. What’s next? Horns? Tentacles?”

“It transits to a new form.”

“You know the only new form I need!” he snarled. “Isn’t it time you kept your side of the bloody bargain?”

“Time is immaterial. Metamorphosis is immaterial. The great project must be completed.”

“Well, it can’t be completed, can it? Even after that mess with Farrow, the Shard’s still not fixed.”

“The Shard of Panestes is immaterial. The great project must be completed.”

“Oh, dear Lord.” Avery sagged back against the cold metal. There was nothing he could do to influence Mr. Stone; he had learned that a long time ago. Argument was as useless as tears or screams or pleas for mercy. Just noises in the dark. “All right. Just quiet this…metamorphosis. Make it still for now. Can you do that?”

“All biochemical processes can be arrested.”

“Then arrest this one, and quickly. We’re going to have a busy night.”

Chapter Four: Uplifted

The carpetbag glistened in the soft light from Diana’s bedside lamp, its surface wet with rain. In the room’s warmth, it steamed.

Diana sat on her bed, watching faint wisps of vapor come up off the canvas. As soon as she had returned to the room she had dropped the bag in the middle of the floor. That had been half an hour ago. She’d not been able to touch it since.

She hadn’t even moved. The journey back had leeched her dry, the final cumulation of days of terror and exhaustion driving the strength from her limbs. All she could do was sit, shivering, and watch the bag, her mind and body no more responsive than cold wax.

The room was quiet. There was a gramophone playing next door; if she listened closely, Diana could hear its music through the wall. She knew the song, she was sure, although she couldn’t put a name to it. The sound of the wind outside was starting to rise, and rain lashed the panes every few seconds, softly, but with enough force to drown out most of what Ace Brigode was trying to impart about his baby.

Diana had carried the bag all the way back from the police station, in the cold and the rain, feeling it grow heavier by the moment. It was not by choice. She had wanted, more than anything, to be rid of the thing, even going severely out of her way in order to discard it. She had walked all the way to the river in the hopes of throwing it in, had crossed to the center of the Garrison Street Bridge and waited until there was no one in sight, but as soon as she had raised the bag over the wall she had heard footsteps.

She had not been in the least surprised to see a policeman step out from the shadows and tip his hat to her.

Diana had lowered the bag and hurried back to land, acutely aware of the cop’s eyes on her. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken. He simply watched her. When she left the bridge and began making her way along the embankment, he didn’t follow.

But someone did.

Later, as she made her way back toward Huntress, she had tried to find a dumpster to put the bag in, but with no success. There had never been a moment when she was unwatched. Even on such a dismal night, with the chill wind rising and the rain squalling down in sullen, intermittent bursts, there had always seemed to be someone around.

And when there wasn’t, that’s when she would hear the footsteps, that slow, measured tread from behind. Unhurried, even when she increased her pace.

Maybe she could have thrown the bag aside and run for her life. Maybe she could simply have dropped it and carried on. Maybe she could have turned, walked straight toward that unseen strider, and flung the bag and its nightmare contents in his face. But she had done none of those things. Once she had heard the footsteps behind her, felt the cold, leaden surety of that tread, all she could do was grip the bag and keep walking, her gaze fixed ahead and her heart a creaking stone in her chest.

The only time she had looked back was when she had reached the door to Huntress Fashions, but by that time she was quite alone.

The song finished. Diana listened for a few seconds, waiting for another, but heard only silence. The gramophone’s owner must have tired of music for the night. It was, after all, almost half-past ten. Lights would be going out all over Arkham.

Silence filled the room. It was overpowering. Diana sat rigid, feeling the stillness welling up inside her like black oil, thickening in her veins, her lungs. She could hardly breathe. Her sight dimmed, swimming to grey as the shadows closed in.

I’m dying, she thought.

Light flickered at the edge of her vision.

She jolted, glanced around to the window. For a few seconds all she heard was the rain and then, distantly, a solid, grinding rumble.

It was a tiny distraction, but it served to break the deadening stillness. Diana made the most of it. She sucked in a breath and forced herself up, staggering to her feet. Her vision whirled for a moment, but then the rigidity in her limbs eased, and she steadied herself, breathing hard.

“Idiot,” she muttered. “Pathetic bloody fool.”

Anger surged up in her. She’d almost given in, let the fear and the exhaustion take her down. She hadn’t slept properly in weeks, not at all in the past few days, and the fatigue was dragging at her. She’d been close to letting it stop her heart.

Well, Carl Sanford wasn’t going to be rid of her that easily.

Lightning fluttered again, silhouetting the houses on the far side of the street. Diana felt herself wince. For all her outward coldness she found storms rather frightening, and always had. When she was young, her brothers had teased her about that, and laughed when the sound of thunder had driven her under the bed. Then again, her fears hadn’t always been unjustified. There had been more than one body under that bed on the night a twister had peeled half her father’s barns open.

Living in Arkham for the past two years had exposed Diana to more than her fair share of thunder. The town seemed to attract storms. It was one of the things she disliked about the place.

Well, there was a solution to that, and to her other problems, too. Filled with a sudden and determined energy, Diana lurched across the room to her wardrobe, stretched up on her toes, and pulled the leather suitcase down from on top.

On her way back to the bed, she drew back her foot and kicked the carpetbag into a corner. She was done with it now.

* * *

Diana didn’t pack much into the suitcase. There was always a temptation, when traveling somewhere new, to fill every scrap of space available. But that would just make the case heavy, and Diana needed to be mobile if she was going to live.

The choice had become simple to her. She could stay in Arkham and wait for Sanford’s wrath to catch up with her and rend her apart, or she could leave, go as fast and as far as she could, and maybe see another year.

It was plain that her attempt at bringing the force of the law down on the man was doomed from the start. Sanford, after all, was no charlatan spiritualist, milking the gullible with parlor tricks and thrown voices. Diana had seen him bring something into the universe that had no right to be there, and she was beginning to get the feeling that he hadn’t been really trying. Even now, he was probably just toying with her, flicking her about as a cat flicks a mouse, amused by the way she scuttled and the smell of her fear.

Diana had owned cats. It was time to get out before that final swipe of the paw.

She put a last few things into the case, closed the lid, and snapped the locks shut. When she lifted it the weight seemed about right—not too heavy to run with, but weighty enough to do some damage if she needed to hit somebody with it.

The case had brass corners, specifically for that reason.

When the sun came up, Diana decided, she would leave the shop early and head for the station. Arkham was not yet cosmopolitan enough to warrant more than a few trains per day, but there was a morning run for Boston that left at nine, and she would feel safer going by rail than boarding a bus or trying to hire a car.

She would spend the hours until then putting her affairs in order, drinking strong coffee, and sitting with her revolver aimed at the door.

All things considered, she’d had worse nights.

Diana put the suitcase down on the floor, and went over to her wardrobe to decide on which coat to take with her. Leaving so many of her things would be a wrench, but one she could bear easily enough. There was no point to being well-dressed if her only admirers were worms.

Her fingers touched the wardrobe handle, and froze. There was a noise coming from downstairs.

Diana held her breath, straining to listen. It was a shrill sound, a clattering chime, faint and far off but unmistakable. The telephone in the back office was ringing.

She drew away from the wardrobe, went quickly to the door and pulled it part-open, hoping that the sound might have issued from the building next door, just like the music. But with the door ajar there was no mistaking the source of the noise. It was her telephone, rattling away down there in the dark, and the caller wasn’t hanging up.

Diana shuddered. The only calls she received late at night were those from the Lodge, and they were rare enough. If that was where the caller stood, she had little desire to hear anything he might have to say.

Perhaps it was Sanford himself, calling to torment her. She could almost see him, phone in hand, smiling his calm and horrible smile as he imagined her huddling in terror at the top of her own stairs, reduced to a whimpering wreck by the sound of a telephone bell…

Diana tugged the door open, trotted down the stairs, and into the shop. She pulled open the door to the back office.

The phone stopped ringing.

She stood for a moment in the doorway, glaring at the telephone. She had missed the call by moments; as she had pushed the office door open, she had seen the earpiece shiver to a stop in its cradle.

The office was lit only from a streetlamp outside. Diana walked in and sat down at her desk, switching on the reading light. She unlocked the drawer, took out the switchblade and the revolver, and placed them both on the wooden surface.

The revolver looked big next to the slim, elegant knife. It was a Webley, short-barreled and angular, with a squat cylinder chambered for fat .455 rounds. Diana’s father had bought it for her, back before the drink and the dementia. He had laughed at the .22 she had pointed out to him first. “That’s a baby’s gun, sweetie,” he’d told her. “A gun’s got one job, and that’s to put the other feller on the ground. You need weight in your hand for that.”

She brushed its cold metal flank with a fingertip. It had been a long time since she had fired it. She hoped she still had the strength in her wrists to handle its kick.

The telephone erupted back into life.

Diana yelped in shock and snatched her hand away from the gun, sending it spinning. In the dim, quiet office the telephone seemed impossibly loud. She drew it toward her, still watching the gun as it spun, and then lifted the earpiece from its cradle.

“Hello?”

Faint sounds drifted from the speaker, like distant waves. Or many voices, a long way away.

She tried again, although her throat was dry now, and her voice a whisper. “Hello?”

“Miss Stanley?”

The reply was not what she had been expecting. It sounded, past the hiss of storm-static, like a young man, nervous and breathless. Certainly not Sanford.

“Who is this?”

“Miss Stanley, this is real important, and I don’t know how much time I’ve got. Please, you need to get out of there.”

She frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Ma’am, you’re in danger. Trust me, you need to get out of the building, as soon as you can.”

The gun scraped to a halt. Diana kept her voice level and cool. “I’m not in the habit of running out into the street. Not on the say-so of anonymous voices on the phone, anyway. Do better.”

“Damn it, lady!” There was a pause, and when he spoke again his voice had a huddled, even more hurried quality to it. “Okay, listen. My name’s Weeden, Harry Weeden. I’m a cop. You were up at the station tonight, you probably saw me.”

The youngest policeman, she guessed, the one pecking at the typewriter keys as if they hurt him. “Go on.”

“That stuff you said about Carl Sanford shook a lot of people up. A couple of the boys here in the station are in Sanford’s pocket, and he’s already got them heading your way, all right?”

“I see.” Diana took a deep breath. “How long do you think I have?”

“These are some mean fellers, ma’am, and he pays them pretty well. I wouldn’t hang around long. Do you have somewhere you can go?”

Diana thought about that for a moment. And then answered, completely honestly, “No. No, I don’t.”

“Damn. Okay, listen. I’ll be at the corner of West Church and Garrison in ten minutes, with a car waiting. Can you make that?”

“I’m not sure.” Diana paced quickly through the journey in her head. “Maybe.”

“Try, ma’am. Really try. I’ll wait for you.”

Diana sat back a little, taking the phone with her. “Why?” she asked warily.

“I’m sorry?”

“If what you’re telling me is true, you’ll be putting yourself in danger. Why would you do that?”

“Because I’m a cop, ma’am. And I don’t like people who try to buy us.”

There was a sharp click as the line went dead.

Diana replaced the earpiece on its cradle, got up, and went to the window, keeping carefully to one side of the frame as she peered out. The office looked out onto Byrne Lane, next to the stock entrance, but she still had a partial view of the main street.

She saw no one, but that didn’t mean anything at all. If Weeden was telling the truth, then Sanford’s men could be several minutes away, or already at her door. She had no way of knowing.

In fact, the only time she could be certain that his story was true would be when the forces of darkness were already forcing their way in.

One way or another, Diana had no intention of staying that long.

* * *

She kept Weeden waiting for a few minutes, quite deliberately. Since her case was already packed, it took her very little time to get out of Huntress Fashions with everything she needed, including the contents of her safe. She even took a few moments to slip a hundred dollars into an envelope, write Millie on the front, and place it neatly on top of the till.

There was a quick way around to the corner Weeden had described, and Diana avoided it. She went by a circuitous route, her pace fast but careful, watching the night from under the brim of her hat. She had the case in one hand and her purse in the other, which meant that she couldn’t carry an umbrella. Then again, the rising wind would probably have torn it from her if she had.

Just before she reached the corner she slowed, put her back against the wall, and peered around.

At that moment, she found herself wondering just what she was turning into. Somehow, in the space of one short life, she had gone from farm girl to shopkeeper to secret cultist, and now to something like a wanted fugitive. And she was even acting the part, wasn’t she? Hugging walls and peeking around corners like a spy, or a character in some appalling detective novel.

The thought made her smile, just a fraction.

There was a Ford parked in the next street, engine idling, its lights glowing yellow in the rain. Diana could see one man in the driver’s seat, but no one else.

She waited a further minute, and then stepped around the corner.

Weeden got out as she approached. “Miss Stanley? Oh man, I was beginning to think they’d got you already.”

She’d been right about his identity. He was out of uniform now, wearing a dark wool coat and a scarf bundled around his neck. Somehow the attire made him look even younger. “I’m sorry. It was farther than I thought.”

“Well, as long as you’re here. Let me take that case for you.”

She handed it to him, and watched him put it onto the back seat. “So where are we going?”

“My sister’s place. It’s out of town, quiet. You’ll be okay there until morning.” He was holding the passenger door open for her, hunched against the wind and the rain, his free hand deep in his coat pocket.

Diana looked up and down the street one last time. There was still no one in sight. She stooped to get into the car.

“Sorry,” said Weeden from behind her.

And—darkness.

* * *

She was curled, awkwardly, in a small space. Her face was covered, blocking out the light and the air. Waves of nausea were washing up from her gut to her pounding head and down again.

The space she was in moved. It growled and shook her about.

Diana blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision, but she was completely blinded by whatever was over her head. Some kind of cloth bag, she suspected. She wondered how long she had been unconscious. She was in a lot of pain, more every second she was awake; mainly from a drilling ache in the back of her skull and neck, but also from the position she was crammed into. She guessed that Weeden had bundled her into the trunk under the Ford’s back seat.

Memory slid back into her mind like water seeping into a sponge.

Weeden must have hit her as soon as she’d turned her back on him. His hand, she remembered, had been in his pocket. All his talk had been lies. He was working for Sanford, and she had walked right into his arms.

At that moment, Diana Stanley would have liked to be very angry at herself indeed. But she was far too afraid. A knot of fear had welled in her gut and set her shaking. In the clattering, bouncing dark, she shivered in freezing terror.

All her plans, all her preparations, had been for nothing. Carl Sanford was waiting for her. If she was lucky, he would only kill her.

She didn’t think that was very likely at all.

The car bounced over some imperfection in the road. Diana’s head struck the inside of the trunk, and the pain almost made her shout. She clamped her teeth together to contain the cry, and wrapped her arms around herself.

That was when her eyes opened, very wide, and a little hope began to push back at the fear.

Her hands were free. Weeden hadn’t tied her.

There had been no one in the street. He would have had time to secure her wrists at the very least. But all he had done was to cover her head with some filthy cloth bag and stuff her into a box.

Diana reached up and pulled the bag away. And then she felt, very slowly and carefully, under her skirt.

She still had the switchblade. He’d not even frisked her. Either Officer Weeden had been in a great hurry, or he was simply very poor at the kidnapping business. Diana slipped the switchblade out of its loop, pressed the button that flicked the blade free, and tensed.

The car swung around in a long curve, and stopped. She heard the engine rattle into silence, the sounds of Weeden opening his door. Footsteps. Another door opening.

The trunk lid came up, letting in cold air and light and a cry of surprise. Diana ignored all three of those things and stabbed upward as hard as she could.

Weeden screamed, high and thin, and fell away.

Diana hurled herself up from the trunk, scrambling out of the car and after him. Energy was singing through her, the shivering fear replaced by fury and an awful desire to do harm. She was panting with rage. She could feel a smile on her face that, were she to see it in a mirror, would probably have horrified her.

Her hand was slick and warm around the knife. She’d hit Weeden, and badly.

The car had pulled up in some kind of building, a large open structure. It was quite dark, but there was light coming in from outside. The floor was rough cement, littered with debris, and there were shapes at the corners of Diana’s vision that spoke of machinery. She smelled oil. Somewhere industrial, a factory perhaps, or workshop.

Most of her attention was on Weeden. The man was on the ground, trying to crawl backward away from her with one hand clamped to the left side of his face. Blood, gleaming black in the dim light, was soaking down between his fingers.

“Where is he?” she hissed.

Weeden shook his head, still backing up.

Diana followed him, showing him the knife. “You think your face is the only thing I’ll cut?” She kicked out at him, the sharp toe of her shoe sinking hard into his thigh. “Where’s Sanford?”

Something heavy struck the roof, high above her head.

She gasped, stepping back and staring up into the blackness. The impact had been powerful, solid and strong enough to shake dust down onto her face. Diana couldn’t imagine what might have made it. It sounded as though a man had jumped down onto the tiles.

The roof was twenty feet above her, maybe more. “What the hell was that?” she breathed.

Weeden twisted on the floor. There was a sudden flurry of movement, and Diana ducked back as some filthy piece of debris whirled toward her. She batted it away, lashing out with the knife in case he followed it up, but he was already running, stumbling, his hand still clamped onto his face. She watched him slam into a door on the far side of the building, wrench it open, and vanish.

Diana closed the knife and put it into her pocket. There were a few scraps of oily cloth amidst the debris on the floor. She picked up one that didn’t look too disgusting and used it to wipe the blood from her hands as she walked quickly back to the car.

She had never actually used the switchblade on anyone before. She was rather surprised at how well it had worked. Weeden would certainly carry something to remember her by from now on.

The thought warmed her a little.

It was a shame that his carelessness hadn’t quite extended to leaving the Ford’s keys in the ignition. Diana had learned many useful skills in her time, but re-wiring automobile ignitions wasn’t one of them. The machine was useless to her, and she needed get out of this building and away. Weeden had delivered her here for a reason.

She grabbed her case and purse from where they lay in the rear footwell. Her hat was there too, but it was dented at the back and had blood on it. Diana left it where it was.

The far side of the space was largely open, half the wall slid aside. The car must have come in from there. Diana ran to the edge of the opening and peered out, keeping to the shadows.

She looked out onto steel and concrete and churning black water.

Weeden had driven her to the waterfront. The building she stood in was, she guessed, some kind of repair shop for the various cranes and lifting gear scattered around. Ahead of her, tall warehouses stood in a row, stacked crates clustered around their flanks like fungal growths, while spidery steel cranes leaned out over a line of cargo steamers nestling at the wharf.

There was a thick, greasy smell to the air of oil and tarpaulin and diesel fumes.

The rain had stopped, but the wind had increased its fury. The Miskatonic seethed under it, rushing hard against the pilings, making the steamers rock and creak against their ropes. Diana stepped out, bracing herself against the gusts. She didn’t want to lose her footing. The ground underfoot was slick with oil and water.

From behind her, the other side of the repair shop, came a sudden burst of shouting.

She spun, looking for a hiding place, ducking toward a covered stack of crates as the voices rose. She couldn’t make out any words, just tones of anger and fear. And then, a scream.

The scream turned to a shriek, and then, as Diana cowered, the shriek went up, the source of it soaring impossibly into the air. A moment later, a hundred feet over her head, the cry ceased with sickening abruptness.

A patter of rain, thicker and hotter than it had any right to be, hissed across the ground. Diana jerked away from it, feeling drops spatter her hair and face, and as she did something ragged spun down from the sky and splashed heavily into the river.

She stumbled away, almost slipping in the loops and gobbets of matter that had sprayed down with the shower, hardly daring to look up. The suitcase slipped from her fingers and she let it fall. The wind took it as it fell, rolling it away toward the river.

“Well, look at you.”

Diana stopped and turned. She knew that voice. The mocking tone of it was unmistakable. “Mr. Avery,” she replied, as calmly as she could manage.

“Hello, Diana.” Phillip Avery was striding toward her from the repair shop, his cane tapping the cement with each step. He was holding his hat down onto his head with his free hand. Behind him, and slightly to one side, walked his assistant, the small man with the frightening eyes. Nightingale. “Lousy night for a stroll.”

“It’s brisk.” She glanced around. “Is Mr. Sanford not gracing us with his presence?”

“No, he has bigger fish to fry, I’m afraid. He’s assigned this little job to me and Nightingale. And poor Officer Weeden, of course.”

Diana could feel drops of Weeden sliming their way down her face. “Nice to see he’s still holding your leash, even from a distance.”

Avery had stopped a few yards away from her. Diana had no doubt that she could get away from him, if she turned and bolted, but Nightingale would be faster, and armed. She had to time things just right.

The man chuckled softly. “You’re a brave one, aren’t you? That little mouse Weeden begged at the end, but you won’t, will you?”

“Would it do any good?”

“No.”

Diana shrugged. “Didn’t think so.”

“It’s a real shame we’ve got to end things now, Diana. I had plans for you, I hope you realize that.”

“I hope you realize you’re in thrall to a maniac.”

“Oh, I’m quite aware of Mr. Sanford’s failings.” The smile had gone from his voice. “As he is aware of mine. But I still have my loyalty, even to him. A lesson you should have learned.” He raised his face to the sky and shouted. “Mr. Stone!”

Diana tipped her head back. A dark shape was drifting through the heavy air toward her, its ragged wings spread high.

She screamed as it came for her, all her resolve gone in the face of its impossible horror, and turned to run. She made it a few steps but the black river loomed wildly in front of her, its rushing suddenly loud enough to be painful. Above it, she heard the flying thing hit cement, and the wet scrabble of its claws as it scampered toward her.

She spun on her heel, hauling the Webley out of her purse.

There was a hellish noise. The revolver went off a yard from the creature, the muzzle flash illuminating it in awful detail; Diana saw its claws, still crimson from Weeden, its tattered wings, the colors seething across its writhing, eyeless head. The hole she had blown through it.

She heard Avery shout out in pain.

The creature made a low moaning sound, a groaning buzz. Diana, wrists singing with pain from the Webley’s recoil, staggered a few steps back, trying to put space between her and the nightmare. She lifted the revolver again.

Avery was pushing the creature out of the way, one hand wrapped around his chest as though the bullet had somehow struck him too, a pistol of his own bulking incongruously in his fist. Something small, a .22.

A baby’s gun, sweetie.

The gun flashed, hot sledgehammer impact against her skull, and she was lifeless, nerveless, sagging away from him.

She tumbled as she fell. Black water, black sky, over and over, replacing one another in ceaseless progression. Until they were one, and the night devoured everything.

Chapter Five: Paper Chase

Screams echoed down through the boarding house ceiling.

Carolyn Fern lay in darkness, heart thudding against her ribs. The screaming had woken her moments before, and sleep still had its claws in her brain. She felt unreal, disorientated, her limbs heavy and cool. She couldn’t see anything. For several long seconds, she wasn’t entirely sure where she was.

She rolled over, the hard narrow bed creaking under her, and tugged the blanket up over an exposed shoulder. She had fallen asleep curled against the wall, to try and shut out the noise of the storm. Now, facing the window, all she saw were monochrome shapes looming at her, grainy and indistinct.

Out in the night, the wind still whooped and wailed, flinging rain against the window.

Carolyn put an arm out and fumbled into the cold for her spectacles. The room refocused as she slipped them on, grey abstracts defining themselves: a wardrobe, a chair, a small table with Farrow’s file and her notebook spread out on it. Her travel clock on the bedside table, its hands glowing eerily.

Carolyn squinted at it, and groaned. She had been asleep less than half an hour before the screaming from upstairs had roused her.

She sat up, put her back against the headboard. There were words in amongst the screams, a man’s voice and a woman’s, but she couldn’t work out what was being said, or even their tone. The walls and floors of the boarding house were thin, but not quite thin enough to let her know whether the couple involved were threatening violence, actively engaged in it, or giving voice to altogether different passions.

There were homes near the alley where Malachi Farrow had died. People must have been woken by his cries. Maybe they had listened, as she was listening now, and been just as unable to make out their content. What was the difference between argument and murder, she wondered, when all you had to go on were sounds through a wall?

The thought was depressing, but it was unavoidable. Malachi Farrow had met a sad, sorry end, alone but for his killer, and nobody but Carolyn seemed to care why.

Footsteps, solid and unflinching, began to hammer up the stairs toward the shouting. Carolyn recognized the pace as that of Mrs. Cleaver, owner of the boarding house, and allowed herself a smile. The raised voices might have robbed her of sleep, but they wouldn’t do so for long.

Sure enough, the screaming was counterpointed by a sudden bellow, at which point it ceased entirely.

There was a lamp on the bedside table. Carolyn switched it on and swung herself out of bed, draping the blanket over her shoulders to keep warm. The room she had rented was small and unheated. It wasn’t the kind of place she would have preferred, although she had stayed in worse during her student days. But her money was dwindling fast, and paying for an overnight stay somewhere comfortable would have come very close to wiping her out.

It had all she needed. A place to bathe, to change, and to read Farrow’s file, over and over.

Mrs. Cleaver’s footsteps were descending again. Carolyn went to the door and pulled it open. “Is everything okay?”

The landlady was even shorter than Carolyn, but twice her width, and sported a figure that could charitably be described as “motherly.” Even wrapped in a pink toweling bathrobe and with her feet encased in matching slippers, there was something formidable about the woman, for which Carolyn was grateful. In the last few hours Mrs. Cleaver’s physical and emotional solidity had been an anchor for her, a welcome fixed point in a world that was becoming increasingly strange and fragile.

Mrs. Cleaver sucked hard on her cigarette, making the tip glow brilliant orange in the near-dark. “Hooch and jealousy, honey. Nothing to worry about. They’ll be cuddling up again by morning.” She cupped a hand and tapped ash into it. “Sorry if I woke you, stomping around.”

“No, I was already awake.”

“Reading again?”

Carolyn gave her an apologetic shrug-smile. “It’s for work.”

“And no play will make you a dull girl, sweetie.” Mrs. Cleaver winked at her, then started to turn away. “Go get some sleep. It’ll all be there waiting for you tomorrow.”

She walked away. Carolyn watched her go until the shadows closed in and only a point of orange light moved in the darkness.

“Yes,” she said, very quietly. “Yes, it will.”

* * *

Carolyn sat up in bed for a long time, in the dark, listening to the rain. Her thoughts would not settle.

She had come to Arkham in the hope of determining, one way or another, what her involvement in Farrow’s death had been. Whether her delving into his nightmares had awoken something deep in his psyche—some dark, ticking mechanism of insanity that had driven him out of the institute and into his final, brutal confrontation.

Carolyn could not continue as a doctor of psychology unless she was sure she had done no harm. It was more than the central tenet of the Hippocratic Oath. It was her center, her core. She had studied and trained so hard in the healing of minds that it had left her no room for anything else. If she couldn’t do that, there simply was nothing in the world for her.

She had hoped that the file would provide the certainty she sought, would answer all her questions about Farrow and how her treatments had affected him. But it was not to be. Even after reading its contents five times it remained an unbreakable mesh between her and the truth, preventing everything except distant observation, hiding as much as it revealed.

The file was detailed, clear, and precise. It was not, however, complete.

What lay on the table was a summary, a distillation of Farrow’s time at Arkham Asylum. Whether for reasons of patient confidentiality, or as an aid to study, what must have begun as a fat and chaotic collection of documents had been rendered down to a potent essence.

There were no transcripts of Farrow’s therapy sessions, just descriptions of what had occurred in them. The endless scribbles and sketches he had been encouraged to produce were not displayed, only noted as to subject and content. The therapies prescribed for him—bromide, carbon dioxide, hydrotherapy, and others—occupied only a single page of dense type.

Carolyn could not fault the diligence and attention to detail with which the file had been constructed, but it had neither answered her questions nor eased her mind.

She still had no idea why he had suddenly left her care and fled back to Arkham.

Carolyn closed her eyes, let her head rest back against the wall. The wind and rain had settled into a rhythmic wash of sound that was almost soothing. The lightning had ceased. There were no further screams from the tenants upstairs.

Slowly, the night grew still around her.

Fatigue welled up through the turmoil in Carolyn’s mind. When the sun rose, she told herself wearily, she would go back to Hardstrom and request to see the original file. She would find all the details that the summary lacked, all the untidy, unsavory facts that would fill the gaps in Malachi Farrow’s sorry tale. And then she would know, once and for all, if she had driven him into darkness.

Maybe she would even discover how he could have dreamed of the weapon that was to kill him, weeks before its blades found his eye.

* * *

The storm was over when she awoke. The wind and rain had washed the air clean, leaving the sidewalks puddled and the sky piercingly blue. Only the merest scribbles of cloud had formed by the time Carolyn left the boarding house and started out toward the asylum.

She stopped off at the diner again, this time to order breakfast. Carolyn seldom ate much, especially in the mornings, but she’d had almost nothing the previous day, just a sandwich and some milk from Mrs. Cleaver when she’d arrived at the boarding house. She was, unusually, ravenous.

It took longer than it should have done for her toast and eggs to arrive. The two waitresses were preoccupied today, and kept huddling together to whisper when they were not serving. Their voices stayed low, but the diner was quiet, and Carolyn’s hearing was very good. She listened as she ate.

The storm, it seemed, had claimed a life.

A body had been pulled from the river very early that morning. The waitresses didn’t yet know who had died, but one of the local shops had not opened when it was supposed to. A girl who worked there had been taken home by the police in tears.

Carolyn remembered being lulled to sleep by the storm’s rhythm, and suddenly lost her appetite. She pushed the plate away, paid for her food, and left the waitresses to their gossip.

* * *

She walked all the way to the asylum. The air was brittle with cold, sharp edges against her face and hands. The rest of her stayed relatively warm—she had worn her cloche hat and scarf and thick winter coat, and she walked briskly enough to stop her legs from becoming chilled.

She had promised to return the file by noon, but disquiet and a catalog of unanswered questions had driven her out into the cold so early that, even after stopping for half a breakfast, she arrived at the asylum fully three hours before that. The gatehouse was occupied by an attendant who let her through without fuss, sparing her another encounter with Groves. Carolyn saw no one else as she walked up the long path to the front door. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought the building deserted.

The inside of the asylum felt very still. Carolyn paused at the threshold, looking across the atrium at the curved desk opposite. The same nurse sat there, already watching her with those grey, unflinching eyes.

Carolyn swallowed, squared her shoulders, and walked as quickly as she could to the desk. “Good morning, ma’am.”

The echoes of her footsteps seemed to take a long time to die away. The nurse continued to glare as they faded.

“May I help you?” she said finally.

“Ah, I hope so. I borrowed a file from Dr. Hardstrom yesterday, and I’d like to return it to him.”

“The Farrow file.”

“That’s correct, ma’am, yes.”

“You may leave the file with me.”

“Ah.” Carolyn’s eyes were burning. She forced herself to blink, trying not to think of it as a sign of weakness. “I was hoping to deliver it to Dr. Hardstrom personally.”

“Dr. Hardstrom is not available.”

Carolyn frowned. “Is he on his rounds? I know I’m a little early. Could I wait for him?”

The nurse’s head tilted just a fraction. “You would be waiting some considerable time. Dr. Hardstrom is on his way to Vienna.”

“Vienna?” Carolyn’s voice had gone very tight and small. “In Austria?”

“Yes,” replied the nurse in the same cool, level tone she had used throughout the entire conversation. “In Austria. Dr. Sigmund Freud is due to deliver a speech at the Medizinische Fakultät der Universität Wien, and Dr. Hardstrom is hoping to hear him speak.”

The woman’s pronunciation had been flawless, at least to Carolyn’s ear. “I see. And he will be back…?”

“In three weeks.”

The Institute would have revoked her license long before that. “Oh,” she said.

The nurse held out her hand for the file. “Is there anything else, Dr. Fern?”

“Well, yes…” Carolyn leaned a little closer. “I’m sorry, Nurse…”

“Palmer.”

She smiled. “Nurse Palmer, thank you. The thing is, this file is only a summary. I really need to see Mr. Farrow’s original records.”

“Those are held in the archive.”

“They are? Oh, that’s great.” Carolyn handed over the file. “May I see them, please?”

“I’m afraid that is out of the question.”

She jerked her hand back before Nurse Palmer’s fingers closed over the manila folder. “What? Why?”

“Only the senior staff of Arkham Asylum have access to the archive. Patient confidentiality is paramount to this facility, Dr. Fern.”

“But I’ve already read the file!”

“As you yourself said, Doctor, you have read a summary.” Palmer reached out and tugged the folder from her grip, quick as a mantis. “When Dr. Hardstrom returns, I suggest you telephone to arrange a supervised visit to the archive. He may oblige you.”

“And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

“I am sure you have patients in Providence that are capable of benefiting from your skills.” She placed the folder down carefully on the gleaming oak desktop. “They need your help, Dr. Fern. Mr. Farrow does not.”

* * *

The sunlight, low and cold though it was, seemed to have increased in brilliance by the time Carolyn walked out through the automatic gate. She dipped her head against it, letting the narrow brim of her hat shield her eyes.

Her head was not down out of despair. Carolyn Fern hadn’t worked her way up through medical school by letting minor setbacks upset her. She had, it was true, felt a crushing weight of disappointment and concern as she was walking the long gravel path away from the asylum, had almost stumbled under the claustrophobic, constricted feeling of having her plans close off around her. But that, she told herself firmly, was a psychological trick she played on herself. Just as a moment of panic sharpens the senses, so can a minute or two wallowing in failure sharpen the resolve.

Carolyn sniffled, took a handkerchief from her pocket, and dabbed her eyes and nose. The cold air must have been affecting her sinuses.

All was not lost. There were things she could do, even now.

She could return to the asylum later in the hope of seeing one of the more junior doctors working there. Perhaps one of them could be persuaded to allow her into the archive. Or she could talk to her mentor at the institute, Dr. Spencer, and see if he could put in a good word for her. It might even do her some good to talk to the police.

No, Carolyn thought, wiping her eyes as she walked, there were many paths to take. It was merely a matter of choosing the most suitable.

She rounded the corner, into a side road, narrower and more enclosed than the wide, silent thoroughfare in front of the building. Part of the asylum’s boundary wall met this street too, high and worn for fifty yards along the sidewalk, filigreed by the black skeletal shadows of naked trees.

There was a man in the street, maybe a dozen yards ahead of her, leaning against the wall. It was Groves. Carolyn groaned inwardly and slowed her pace, wondering if she should cross the road. She had no desire to meet the silent man’s predatory gaze today.

The orderly lifted a cigarette, his movements very slow and deliberate, almost as though he stood underwater, not out on the silent street. There were several butts lying on the sidewalk around him. He had been there a while. Perhaps, Carolyn thought, Dr. Hardstrom didn’t let him smoke within the asylum. Some shell shock patients feared the smell of burning.

A thought occurred to her then; one that was so strange to her, so out of character, that she wondered what succession of aberrant mental processes could have led her to it. Even while it was taking shape in her mind, a part of her rebelled. If she had waited, thought it through, she would have rejected it out of hand.

There were moments, though, when giving oneself time to think was not a good idea. She was already striding toward the orderly. “Mr. Groves? Hello there, sir. I was wondering if I might ask a favor…”

* * *

Had Carolyn Fern been afraid of spiders, she would have taken one look at the interior of the Arkham Asylum records archive and gone back to Providence there and then. Luckily, she had always been unaffected by that particular phobia, so when Groves had unlocked the door for her she had been able to enter the maze of teetering shelves and dusty filing cabinets with only a small degree of disgust.

She was careful, though. After all, being unafraid of harmless arachnids was one thing. Blundering around under nests that looked suspiciously like those of the Northern Black Widow was quite another.

The archive, Carolyn guessed, took up most of the asylum’s basement. Its low ceiling was mazed with exposed pipework, much of it home to great sheets of spiderweb. Those conduits that remained clean did so only because of the waves of dry heat they radiated; the rest of the basement was occupied by the building’s boilers. Hardstrom had to keep his office at greenhouse temperature somehow.

Groves had not stayed with her. Once the door was unlocked he had shown her how to latch it and where the light switch was, and then vanished, presumably to stash the money she had given him. Carolyn was quite relieved about that. She could see that her time in the archive was going to be difficult enough, without the oversized orderly’s eyes on her the whole time.

And so she had been left alone, in the dust and the heat under Arkham Asylum, with a notebook and an empty purse and a small army of assorted arthropods for company.

She set to work, trying not to think too much.

The idea that she had actually offered Groves a bribe made her giddy with distress, far more so than the fact that he had accepted it and taken almost all the money she had left. There was a little in her case back in the boarding house, but not enough to pay Mrs. Cleaver for the room. If Carolyn didn’t want to break any more laws, she would have to telephone her mother and see if she could get some cash wired to the nearest Western Union.

Which would greatly please the elder Fern, she was sure. The two had never agreed on Carolyn’s choice of profession. A shortfall in funds would be taken as evidence that a career in medicine was beyond her after all, and no doubt cause much motherly rejoicing. You tried your best, dear. These things don’t always work out.

Scowling at the thought, Carolyn moved to the next filing cabinet along and gave it a couple of swift kicks, probably harder than was required, to disturb any spiders lurking within. She pulled open the top draw and began sorting through its contents.

Given the asylum director’s near-obsession with tidiness, Carolyn could only assume that Hardstrom had never gone down to the basement. The place would probably have given him a seizure just to look at it. Perhaps, long ago, the shelves and racks and cabinets had been tidy and in some kind of order, but the clutter must have just kept piling up. Everything that the asylum no longer had use for was here. Heaps of old clothes, bags of possessions from long-dead patients, crumbling files and outdated textbooks… It didn’t seem as though anything had been thrown away in thirty years.

Had Carolyn moved a box to find a moldering corpse flattened beneath it, she would have been saddened, but unsurprised.

The filing cabinet had been the tenth one she had tried. The top drawer failed to yield any useful results, which was not unexpected. The second contained only a crumpled, dusty mass of brown paper, tied crudely around with a grimy length of twine. Carolyn was about to slam the drawer closed and move on when she noticed what had been written on it.

Her breath caught in her throat. She lifted the package free and turned it to the light, making sure she hadn’t been mistaken.

FARROW M J. 112 EASTMAN ST ROOM 6 CONTENTS. NO CLAIMANT, RETURN TO ARKHAM ASYLUM.

Carolyn had no idea where Eastman Street was, but she was willing to bet that the address on the package was a boarding house or hostel. Farrow had found a place to stay when he got to Arkham.

That was organized thinking, not the whim of a deluded man.

There was a small table near the door. Carolyn carried the package there and set it down, then went to the door, opened it just enough to peek around. “Mr. Groves?”

There was no one in sight. The short corridor that lead from the archive to the stairs was empty and dark. Carolyn nodded to herself, then closed the door and latched it. She didn’t want to be disturbed now.

She had nothing to cut the twine with, but her fingernails were just long enough to tease the knot apart, after a minute or two of cursing whoever had tied it together so tightly. Once the string was off she was able to see that the package was actually a large, thick paper bag, wrapped over and around some shapeless object inside. There was a red ink-stamp in the corner that read ARK  M POLI E DEP  TMEN .

“Evidence?” she whispered. “But why would it be here?”

Carolyn blinked at the bag for a few moments, then upended it over the table.

The contents slid out in a single, sorrowful mass. Three weeks of being bound together in the continual heat of the archive had bound them into a kind of fossilized slab. Carolyn had to pry it apart with her fingers.

The bag contained mostly clothes: a change of underwear, a shirt, a battered pair of gloves. There was a comb and a toothbrush, and a half-empty bottle of Woodbury’s hair tonic. This was not evidence, Carolyn thought sadly, laying them out in front of her. Just the few pitiful objects Farrow had left in his room in Arkham. The police must have bundled them together to send back to his family, then palmed them off on the asylum when they realized he had none. His status as a one-time mental patient would still be on their files.

It was a careless, thoughtless way to treat the final relics of a man’s life. Such was the stigma carried by the mentally ill.

Carolyn picked the items up, one by one, and put them back in the bag as carefully as she could. It was a silly thing to do, she knew, an act of wholly inappropriate and pointless reverence. But she couldn’t help feeling that Malachi Farrow had been let down by everyone, even after he was dead, and she wanted to make up for that somehow. Besides, she had liked him.

She opened the shirt to fold it properly, smoothing it with the edge of her hand. As she did so, something in the pocket crackled like rough paper. Carolyn reached in and found a folded brown envelope. There was a name written on it in Farrow’s coarse, uneven script.

“Mark Harrigan,” Carolyn read aloud, frowning. She didn’t know the name.

The envelope wasn’t sealed. Inside were several pieces of newspaper, articles torn from some cheap broadsheet, already fading in the archive’s heat, and a folded sheet of lined paper. A letter. Feeling queasily invasive, Carolyn held it up to the light.

Mark

Dont want to get all Black Mask but if your reeding this Im probably ded. I tryed to call your place in Harisberg but got some lady sed you hadnt lived there for years so Im writing this and Ill stash it where the cops will find it and send it you.

Them crawdads from Mexico are here in Arkham. Some counsilman saw one a couple of weeks ago. See I put sum clippings in here for you. People thought he was on the sauce and he hung himself but I red what he saw in The Examiner and came to Arkham. Think I asked too many question coz I saw the thing flying down tonite and it saw me or whatever they do instead of seeing.

If I was young Id give it a fair fight but its been a ruff 10 years since we burned up those 2. Dont tell no one you red this or theyll think your crazy like me and put you in the asilum.

Good luck killing this thing if I dont.

Mal

Carolyn read the letter twice, then folded it and put it back in the envelope. A cold feeling had welled up in her.

Crawdad was what her mother called crayfish, small lobsters. It sounded as if Farrow was using the term to describe someone he had seen in Mexico, some pejorative term for the Villistas he had fought there. Bad fellers, he’d once said to her. Real monsters. The ones who had slaughtered everyone in Farrow’s squad except for himself and one other.

Could this Mark Harrigan have been the other survivor? It made a disturbing kind of sense that Farrow might try to warn his old comrade in arms, if he was under the delusion that Mexican revolutionaries were at large in Arkham. Perhaps the councilman he mentioned had started some wild rumor. Farrow had seen it reported in the local papers, and it had triggered some memory inside him, driven him to Arkham to find his old enemies.

She spread the newspaper clippings out into a line on the tabletop. There were four of them, and although none of the clippings included a date, the progression of events described in them was not difficult to follow.

The councilman’s name was Edward Hopkirk. In early October he had stumbled into the Arkham city police station babbling that he had seen something inexplicable flying low over the Miskatonic river, a monstrous creature he described as an eyeless lobster as big as a man with huge, bat-like wings. Although the councilor had been plainly terrified, he was promptly ridiculed in the local press. Rumors abounded that he had been drinking on the night in question, and questions were raised about the number of speakeasies that must still be operating in Arkham.

A short while later, Edward Hopkirk’s wife and children had forced their way into his study, after he had retreated there to work and not emerged for several hours. They had discovered him hanging from the chandelier, his face so swollen and black that they could not be sure initially if it was him up there at all.

Dully, Carolyn put the clippings into the envelope with the letter, and slipped the whole sorry story into her pocket.

Farrow had not been referring to revolutionaries when he had written about crawdads. He had somehow shared in the delusional visions of Edward Hopkirk, connecting it to the violent events he had endured in Mexico, and come to Arkham to hunt real monsters.

This was not the first time Carolyn had underestimated the fragility of a man’s mind, but it was the most catastrophic. Her mother had been right. She had no place working in the medical profession.

It seemed Carolyn Fern was a danger to her patients after all.

* * *

She sat under the thrumming pipes for several minutes, wondering if she should cry. After a time, though, she decided that what she should do instead was bundle up Farrow’s things in the way she had found them, leave Arkham Asylum as quietly as she could, and return to Providence in the morning. She would officially resign from the Lemarchand Institute as soon as she got there.

She thought these things with a kind of flat, gloomy acceptance. While the result of her investigation was not what she had wanted, it had, in a way, been the one she had expected.

What she would say to her mother was not such an easy thing to contemplate.

Carolyn was on her way up the stairs when a door slammed heavily, somewhere above her. She felt the impact of it, saw dust drift down from the ceiling. A moment later voices filtered down, not far away, harsh and urgent. A sudden burst of shouting.

And then a woman’s scream, high and anguished.

Carolyn padded up the steps, listening hard. If she was seen by anyone there would be hard questions asked, questions to which she had no legal answer. Hardstrom could make a lot of trouble for her if she was discovered sneaking around the asylum, even all the way from Vienna. If he decided to be vindictive, she could end up in front of a judge.

Besides, she told herself, the Arkham staff knew what they were doing, better than she did. If a patient was in distress, they would do all they could to calm her.

But the scream had sounded terrified, tortured. Carolyn couldn’t ignore it.

The steps led up to a short hallway. Closed doors denoted various service areas of the asylum—the kitchens, storage areas, the boiler and archives behind her. At the end of the hall, a door with a frosted glass panel separated her from the atrium and Nurse Palmer’s frightening eyes.

Another scream ripped out. Carolyn ran to the end door and wrenched it open.

A policeman stumbled past her, cursing through bloodied hands.

She ducked out behind him, and ran across the tiled floor toward the struggling, scrambling knot of bodies by the reception desk. Carolyn saw another policeman as part of the mass, as well as Groves and two more orderlies.

Groves had an open straitjacket in his hands, but the flailing scrum of bodies was in his way and he was getting tangled in the straps. Carolyn saw him step back, trying to get a different angle, and as he did so she saw the woman at the center of the commotion, half-held by the cop and the other orderly, but still wrenching herself about, frantically trying to claw her way free.

The woman’s dark auburn hair was tangled and sodden, her skin white with shock and cold. The maroon dress she wore was ripped half off her shoulder and there was a long, ugly wound tracking up from the right of her forehead and into her hairline, seeping bright blood down around her eyes. She was shivering, sobbing, her face twisted in unreasoning fear.

She looked very different from when Carolyn had last seen her, dabbing up spilled coffee in the Curwen Street diner.

“What in God’s name is going on here?” She stared down at the woman. “Don’t tell me this is a patient.”

“Just brought her in.” That was the policeman. He spoke without looking at her, all his attention on the squirming arm he was holding. “You a doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Then do something about this crazy bitch, willya? She just broke Elmore’s nose.”

Carolyn glared at him. “Does anyone know her name?”

“Just told you. ‘Crazy Bitch.’”

“Hold her!” That was a new voice, coming from the other end of the hall. Carolyn looked up to see a young man in a brown tweed suit and white lab coat striding toward them. Nurse Palmer was running alongside him, a syringe ready in her hand. “Get her arm up!”

“Wait!” Carolyn ran quickly around to block his path. “Doctor, you can’t sedate her.”

His eyebrows went up under his fringe. “And you are?”

“I’m Dr. Carolyn Fern, sir. From the Lemarchand Institute in Providence.”

Nurse Palmer glared at her. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, be quiet,” Carolyn snapped. “Blink once in a while. Doctor, this woman is hypothermic. If you give her a sedative you could stop her heart.”

He looked quickly from Carolyn to the distraught woman squalling on the marble, and then back. “What do you suggest? She’ll rouse every patient in the building with that racket!”

“Let me try.” She dropped to one knee in front of the woman. “Ma’am? Listen to me now, okay?”

The brunette twisted away. Carolyn reached out, took her cold face between her hands. “No, to me now. No one else is here.” She kept her voice even, soothing, perfectly level. Forceful enough to break through the patient’s walls of distress, but not loud enough to shock or startle. “You look at me.”

The woman’s eyes came around to meet her gaze.

“That’s good. No one else is here. Just my voice. You don’t see anything else, don’t hear anything else. Just me and my voice, right here. Right here.”

She kept on, level and slow and unyielding. And gradually, the woman grew still.

* * *

The young doctor’s name was Lawson. Later, in one of the asylum’s treatment rooms, he spoke to Carolyn as the injured woman was being helped into a straitjacket.

“Thank you, Dr. Fern,” he said very quietly. His arms were folded and he looked calm, but Carolyn could see he was shaken. “That was impressive.”

She smiled. “I suppose I just have the right kind of voice. Do we know who she is?”

“One of the nurses recognized her. She owns a local shop, a boutique. Her name’s Diana Stanley.” He glanced back as the orderly who had been buckling the straitjacket walked past him to the door. The woman was secured now, lolling in a chair with her eyes closed. Once Carolyn had calmed her, a much more mild sedative had been administered. “The police found her wandering on the riverbank, halfway between here and Kingsport. She was docile until they got her into town, then something sparked her off and they brought her here.”

“Looks like someone attacked her.”

“Maybe. That head wound looks nasty. I’ll have one of the nurses stitch it properly later.”

Carolyn nodded. The woman’s head had been bandaged for now. “People were talking about a body in the river this morning. I suppose that’s her.”

“No.” Lawson’s face darkened. “No, I attended that with the coroner. A young man, we think. Looks like he got drunk and tried to swim the Miskatonic. It happens, sadly.”

“Oh, the poor man. He drowned?”

“Boat propeller.”

“Oh my.”

“Listen, I need to go and see to the other patients. Some of them were quite agitated by the commotion. Can you stay with her until the nurse comes back?”

“Happy to, sir.”

Carolyn drew up a chair as Lawson left, sitting down facing the sedated woman. “Diana? Ma’am, can you hear me?”

The brunette’s eyes flickered open. She blinked wearily at Carolyn a few times, and then a smile tugged crookedly at her lips.

“I know you,” she mumbled. “One of Avery’s little toys…”

“I don’t know anyone called Avery, Diana, I’m sorry.”

The smile fell away, and when the woman spoke again her voice was small, like that of a frightened child. “Did you send that monster after me?”

So she had been attacked. Carolyn leaned closer. “What monster?”

“That flying thing.” Diana’s face crumpled. She let out a sob. “Horrible flying crab.”

Suddenly, Carolyn was finding it hard to breathe. “What?”

“It didn’t have any eyes.” Diana was crying openly now, tears streaming down and washing into the dried blood on her face. “It’s head was just…like worms. How could it see me when it didn’t have any eyes?”

The impossibility of what Carolyn was hearing sent her mind reeling. Diana was describing the creature Edward Hopkirk had seen flying over the Miskatonic.

The man’s delusion must have been as infectious as influenza, she thought wildly. But Diana was no soldier, shell-shocked and riven by ancient trauma. She hadn’t fought revolutionaries in Mexico. She owned a clothing store.

Despite everything she believed in, Carolyn found herself glancing nervously up at the ceiling.

The woman was coming apart in front of her. “Please don’t make it come back,” she wept, curling in on herself. “Please. I’ll do anything you want, please don’t make it come back.”

Her terror was heartbreaking. Carolyn came forward and put her arms around Diana’s shoulders. “It won’t come back,” she breathed. “I promise. They don’t let monsters in here.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll be good next time.”

“Diana, you’re safe here.” She pulled back. “Listen to me. No one will hurt you here.”

“You promise?”

“Well, in a little while a nurse will come in and fix your head up, okay? That might sting a bit.”

The woman nodded miserably. Carolyn put a hand up and brushed the bandages with a fingertip. “Did the monster do this?”

“No.” Diana sniffed loudly, then frowned. “No… I can’t remember… I think somebody shot me.”

“Shot you?”

“Only with a little gun, though. Hm.” Diana gave her that twisted, sly smile again. It looked odd, surrounded by tears and blood. “Little tiny gun. Baby’s toy.”

“All right.” Carolyn stood up. “Diana, I’ve got to go now. But I’ll come back and see you very soon.”

“Don’t go.”

“I have to. But Diana? I want you to promise me something.” She leaned close, and lowered her voice. “Please don’t tell anyone else about the monster.”

“Not the doctor?”

“No, not even him.” Carolyn closed her eyes for a moment, steeling herself. She knew she would hate herself for what she was about to say next. “If the monster hears you’ve been talking about him, he might come back.”

“Oh.” Diana shivered. “Oh. I promise.”

“Thank you.” She put her hand on the woman’s shoulder, felt the coldness of her skin through the torn dress. “Try to rest, okay? I’ll be back soon.”

Diana nodded, drops of watery blood falling from her face onto the white canvas of the straitjacket. “I will. I’ll be good. Tell Mr. Avery I’ll be a good girl.”

* * *

In the corridor outside the treatment room Carolyn stopped, closed her eyes and put her back against the closed door. Threatening Diana with the monster’s return had made her feel utterly wretched, but she had the ghastly feeling that it was necessary.

Farrow had come to Arkham to find a monster, that much was certain. From that point of reference, Carolyn could see two possibilities.

Either Hopkirk, Farrow, and Diana Stanley had all shared an identical delusion about the same imaginary creature, and had all died or been injured in wildly different and purely coincidental ways, or Farrow had found exactly what he was looking for.

It was a horrible choice. If the world was as sane and logical and ordered as it should be, then Carolyn was responsible for the death of Malachi Farrow and had probably done untold damage to the psyches of all her other patients. And if she were actually a competent and beneficial physician, then the world she knew was a sham, a fragile shell of false reality curving over a realm of unspeakable monsters.

She reached into her pocket and felt dry paper against her fingertips. The only way she was going to find out was to delve far deeper into Farrow’s past than it was safe to go.

Chapter Six: The Vanishing

The church spire was a knife blade, stabbing up into grey morning air.

Harrigan stood against the churchyard wall, his feet on hallowed ground, watching the congregation file out, dark-clad, heads bowed, each one pausing at the doorway to shake the hand of the priest. He was too far away to hear their words, but he had heard the platitudes before. Just another stream of frightened people, thanking the holy man for holding back the darkness a little longer.

He brought the Lucky Strike to his lips, inhaled hard and deep, feeling dry, bitter warmth fill his lungs. It would be a few minutes yet before the church was empty. He had some time to kill.

Heat pricked Harrigan’s fingertips. He dropped the butt and ground it under his heel, then picked up his suitcase and walked further into the cemetery, looking for the right tombstone.

The churchyard was not large, its low wall enclosing only a few dozen graves. Harrigan found the one he was looking for after a minute or two: white marble, upright, unetched by time.

He set the suitcase down, and crouched by the side of the grave. Some dry leaves had piled against the base of the stone. He brushed them away.

“Hello, Sophie,” he said.

He never spoke loudly when he talked to her. It wasn’t because he feared anyone overhearing—Harrigan had given up caring what people thought of him a long time ago. But the things he had to say were for her, and no one else.

She would hear him, no matter how soft his voice.

“It’s a cold one today, honey.” He cupped his hands and blew through them. He had no gloves. “I’m not kidding. You’d hate it. If this is what fall in Arkham feels like, I don’t wanna be here for winter.”

The line at the church door was thinning out. There were only a few diehards left; the very lonesome and the very old. Harrigan lowered his voice even further. “Tell you the truth, I don’t want to be here at all. This is a bad place, Soph. I can feel it. It’s like…like when we went to look at that apartment in Penbrook, remember that? Floorboards were rotten. We were both walking around like we were on eggshells, couldn’t wait for that realtor to shut the hell up so we could get out.”

She wouldn’t have liked the profanity. He’d have earned a frown for that. “Sorry, honey. This town just makes me nervous, is all. Feels just like that apartment, like the ground’s gonna give way under my feet any second.”

He glanced up, over the top of the headstone. The priest was waving at his last parishioner, turning back to the relative warmth of the church. It was time.

Harrigan stood up. “Don’t worry, I won’t be sticking around. I’ll just do what I need to do and then get on the first train out.” He lifted the suitcase, bracing himself against its weight.

“Sleep well, Sophie. Keep warm. And wait for me, okay? I won’t be long.”

He stepped carefully around the headstone and began walking toward the church.

He hadn’t looked at the name on the stone. He never did, not in any of the cemeteries he had visited. As far as he was concerned, it had been Sophie’s for as long as he’d needed it to be.

In truth, Sophie Harrigan had no grave. Those who vanish into thin air are seldom laid to rest.

* * *

Almost all the parishioners had left South Church by the time Harrigan pushed the door open and stepped inside, and the priest was nowhere to be seen. There were only two people left among the pews, a young woman in a cloche hat sitting to the right of the nave, up near the altar, and a man to Harrigan’s left.

The man was hunched over in his pew, head in his hands, sobbing quietly.

It was a little warmer within the church than out among the graves. Harrigan unbuttoned his trench coat, letting it hang open as he walked slowly between the ranked pews toward the altar. He carried the suitcase carefully in his left hand, bracing himself against its weight. His leg was troubling him today, more than it usually did.

The church was plain, almost undecorated. Bare wooden beams arced high over his head, dark against white plaster and naked stone. The carpet under his feet was thin, unedged, the color of old blood.

Harrigan passed the front pews and stopped in front of the altar. He dipped his head, closed his eyes for a moment.

Look after her. And don’t judge her for the things I’m about to do.

There was a sound behind him, a scuff of shoe on bare carpet. He turned to see the woman standing between the front pews, her hands clasped nervously. “Mr. Harrigan?”

She had a high, quiet voice, more whispery than when she had spoken to him on the telephone. Her hat was pulled down tightly over reddish, shoulder-length hair, and her black coat was buttoned tightly to her throat.

She looked very much as he had imagined her, although rather more young and small. The round spectacles she wore fit his mental image perfectly.

“Dr. Fern,” he replied.

“Carolyn.” She extended a hand. “You’re a hard man to track down, Mr. Harrigan.”

He clasped her hand briefly. “Thanks for getting in touch, Doc—ah, Carolyn.” The name sounded odd when he tried to say it. “Sorry if I was kinda short when we first spoke.”

She smiled shyly. “That’s all right. People tell me to go to hell all the time.”

Near the back of the church, the crying man’s voice rose into guttural sobs, and then faded again.

Harrigan frowned back at him. “Sorry,” he replied absently. “Bad day.”

“I noticed you limping. Does your leg hurt?”

Harrigan hadn’t realized the weakness was visible. He had learned to hide it well, or so he’d thought. “Only when it’s cold,” he lied.

Carolyn had put her hands under her arms. “Maybe we should go somewhere warmer.”

“Maybe…” Harrigan had intended to speak to Carolyn Fern only within the church, to stay inside its sanctuary confines while he found out what she knew. He’d suggested the location as a kind of neutral territory. Safe ground, or at least as safe as anywhere could be.

Harrigan had no love of doctors. None of them had helped him, not when Sophie was ill or after she was gone. He still couldn’t trust anyone in that profession.

Leaving with Carolyn had not been part of his plan.

But the woman plainly had no desire to stay, and now that he was inside the church, Harrigan could only agree with her. Its silence, broken only by the continual weeping of the man in the last pew, was beginning to prey on his nerves. There was something unwholesome about the nakedness of the walls, the deliberate sparseness of the furnishings. It was like a façade of poverty, a pious veneer laid over some secret and stinking corruption. It made his skin crawl.

“There’s a diner,” Carolyn was telling him. “The trolley goes right past it.”

He nodded. “Coffee sounds good.”

They started back down the nave. The sobbing man didn’t look up as they passed him, just continued lamenting into his hands. Harrigan waited until they were at the door, then scowled back at him. “He’s got to be on the sauce.”

“No. He’s done something. Hurt someone he loves. And he tried to kill himself before he came here.”

“Damn. He told you that?”

“No,” she said. “I just know.”

* * *

It seemed impossible to believe, as he walked with Carolyn out of the church, but before she had gotten in touch with him he had almost forgotten about Mexico.

There was a time, of course, when it was all he could think about. When all he saw whenever he closed his eyes were pulpy monstrosities flinging themselves from the darkness, claws reaching out to unmake him. But the grinding necessities of living had dulled the memories. New nightmares had come to overwrite the old.

Time had passed.

He had been a young man when he had crept into that cave in the Sierra Madres: wide-eyed and smooth-skinned, a gangly virgin clutching his rifle like a talisman. It would be a cliché, and a very foolish one at that, to say that he had grown significantly by the time he and Farrow had emerged. Mark Harrigan was as young and frightened after his encounter with the monsters as he was before. He was merely in considerably more pain.

It had taken them two days to find their way back to camp, Farrow bleeding from a dozen wounds, Harrigan dragging a useless left leg and shivering uncontrollably from the chill at his core. If one of Lieutenant Brady’s patrols hadn’t stumbled across them in the hills east of camp, Harrigan had no doubt that they would have been dead by the third morning.

The field medics could only patch them up. Later, Harrigan had been shipped to Western Pennsylvania Hospital, where the doctors there had decided that the shrapnel in his leg was too deep to remove. It was in the bone, they told him. It would be with him until he died.

For the constant coldness behind his ribs, they occasionally allowed him a second blanket.

Harrigan had carried that chill with him all the way back to Harrisburg. It had stayed at the center of him, constant and incurable, while his strength had returned and his relationship with Sophie had blossomed. It became part of him. Even on his wedding day, he had shivered around it.

It hadn’t left him until his first night with her, and then it had been as if she had drawn the coldness out of him, her love and the heat of her embrace thawing the ice around his heart. He had woken in her arms the next morning, seen sunlight streaming through her bedroom window, and felt warm for the first time in months.

She had saved him. And yet, for all his strength, he had failed to do the same for her.

* * *

Later, in the diner, he sat across from Carolyn Fern in the booth furthest from the door, hands wrapped around a mug of bitter coffee. The booth was next to a window, which made Harrigan uncomfortable. He always sat out of sight when he could.

Carolyn was nervous, too. He could tell by the way she kept knotting her fingers together, and how she kept glancing up at the clouds.

At least there were no other customers nearby. They could talk, as long as they kept their voices low. “Warming up any?”

She lifted her mug and took a sip, grimacing slightly. “A little, thank you.”

“It’s the river. Washes all the heat right out to sea.”

She nodded and looked away again, out of the window.

A silence fell. Harrigan eyed Carolyn over the rim of his mug, feeling awkward and stupid and impatient. Ever since Sophie had gone, he had lost the trick of small talk. When he spoke it was usually because something needed to be said.

If he could have trusted her, perhaps it would have been easier.

Thankfully, Carolyn broke the silence first. “Sorry for sending so much material. If there’s anything you didn’t read—”

“I read it.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Everything?”

“Everything.”

Her skepticism didn’t insult him. The yellow envelope she had mailed him had been stuffed with documents: newspaper clippings, typed descriptions of what Carolyn had read in Farrow’s medical file and the police report on his death, local maps and advertisements, even rail timetables. And Farrow’s letter to him, of course.

It had taken him a day and a night, and a full bottle of scotch, but he had read it all.

“So what do you think?” she asked.

“I think you’ve been very thorough.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Dr. Fern, I know exactly what you meant. But look at this from my point of view—so far, three people in this town have come out and said they’ve seen these things. Two of them are dead and one’s in the asylum.” He smiled grimly. “So you’ll forgive me not being all that trusting.”

“I quite understand, sir. On the other hand, if there was nothing to this, you wouldn’t even be here.”

He raised his mug and tipped it to her in salute.

She sighed. “Sitting here in daylight, it all makes sense, in as much as anything does. Diana said she saw the same thing as Councilman Hopkirk, but she could have read about it in the paper in the same way Mr. Farrow did. All right, her description was a little more detailed, but that could be natural embellishment.”

Harrigan nodded. “Go on.”

“And she was definitely shot. The nurse who stitched her scalp at the asylum picked lead shavings out of her skull, so nothing supernatural there.”

“She was lucky,” said Harrigan, not entirely to Carolyn. “Not many people take a bullet in the head and live through it.”

“I’m not sure lucky is how I’d put it.”

“Thick-skulled, then.”

A smile quirked at her lips, then vanished again. “But then the lights go out, and when I’m sitting in the dark the only rational explanation is that something completely irrational is happening.” She closed her eyes, putting a hand to her head as if in pain. “I can’t stand this,” she breathed. “I believe in science and reality, not ghosts and monsters.”

“Here.” Harrigan reached into his inside pocket for his hip flask, spun the cap open and poured half a shot into her coffee.

She looked up at him sharply, eyes narrowed. “Don’t patronize me, Mr. Harrigan. Just understand that I’m finding this all a little difficult to grasp. If a patient comes to me saying they have nightmares about a giant flying lobster, then I usually have to determine what the lobster represents in terms of parental abandonment, or sexual repression, or mental trauma. It doesn’t usually occur to me that it might actually represent a giant flying lobster.”

The last three words were snarled through gritted teeth, and rather more loudly than Harrigan would have liked. He glanced quickly back over his shoulder, but none of the other patrons were looking at them.

“Fine,” he muttered, and reached over to swap her mug with his. Carolyn opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again with a snap.

Harrigan put his forearms on the tabletop and leaned forward, dipping his head to her level. “Doc, Mal Farrow was my friend. He saved my life back in Mexico, and we saw things no one in this damn lousy world should ever see. And the first I heard about his death was three days ago, from you. I didn’t get his last message. I wasn’t around to help him. I didn’t even get to see him buried.”

“That must be hard,” she said quietly.

“Damn right it’s hard.” He took a sharp gulp of his coffee. The whiskey had improved it quite a lot. “Now I can’t tell you what he saw the night he died, or Hopkirk, or who tried to put a bullet through Diana Stanley’s head. All I know is that the things Farrow and I fought in Mexico were real.” He sat back. “And if there is one here in Arkham, then so help me I’m going to kill it like we killed the last two.”

Carolyn blinked. “Giant. Flying. Lobsters.”

“They really aren’t all that much like lobsters. That’s just the first thing you think, on account of the claws.”

“What are they, Mr. Harrigan?”

He shrugged.

“Were they demons, you think? Some kind of spirit—”

His sudden, mirthless laugh cut her off. “Come on, Doc. This is what you ask your patients, right? ‘Did God make you do it? Did you see the Devil?’”

Her eyebrows went up. “You sound like you’ve had experience.”

Harrigan said nothing, just fixed his eyes on hers. Usually that was enough to make people shut up.

Not Carolyn Fern, it seemed. “Was it the war?”

She wasn’t going to let it go. And for some reason, he didn’t mind all that much.

“No,” he said finally. “The war was… It was just a war.”

“Then…”

“My wife died. It sent me a little crazy for a while.”

Her expression darkened. “I’m very sorry to hear that, sir.”

“Yeah.” Harrigan found that he wanted very much to change the subject. “So how’s Diana?”

Carolyn, thankfully, let him. “Not well.”

“Has she come up with any more details about the attack? Where it happened?”

“Not really.” She shook her head. “The bullet, you see. Her memory of the event was largely wiped away.”

“Damn.”

“Every time I think she’s improving, she lapses again. She suffered a very serious assault, but this is more than just shock. I thought maybe she’d been… That her attacker might have…” She looked down, coloring slightly. “Might have forced himself on her, but there’s no evidence of that.”

Harrigan felt his fists clenching. He willed his hands to relax. “That’s something, I guess.”

“I think she must have been on the edge when she was attacked—exhausted, frightened out of her wits for a long time, not just that one night. I saw her the day before, and she was nervous then…”

A trolleybus grumbled past, clattering and chiming. The vibration of its passing came up through the floor, rattling crockery on the table. Harrigan could feel time slipping out from under him. “I need to see her.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why? You think I’ll scare her worse?”

“She’s in a very fragile state, Mr. Harrigan. A new face at this stage could slow her recovery even further. Besides, what do you think she’ll tell you that she hasn’t already told me?”

“She’s in danger.”

“She’s safe enough where she is. I mean, I thought she’d be at risk to start with, so I convinced her not to say anything about this ‘monster.’ Trust me, that didn’t last. When I last saw her she was accusing half the town of being part of some conspiracy. I don’t think—”

“Oh, wise up!” He snapped the words out a little too loudly, drawing stares from some of the diner’s other customers. He scowled, lowered his tone. “Doc, people get whacked in hospitals all the time.”

Carolyn was glaring at him, her jaw set. “Mr. Harrigan, Arkham Asylum is one of the most secure institutions I’ve ever seen.”

“Sure. And all the security is built to stop people getting out.” He leaned closer. “At least let me scout the place, make sure she’s safe. If you don’t think she’s up to talking to me, then okay. You’re the expert.”

She held his gaze for several seconds, then put her hands up. “Should I call a cab?”

He looked down at the suitcase. It really was very heavy. “Sure, why not. My leg’s killing me.”

* * *

On the way to Arkham Asylum Carolyn had warned him about the strange nurse who ran the reception desk. “Nurse Palmer,” she’d told him, as they walked up the long gravel path. “Whatever you do, don’t look her in the eye.”

“Why not?” Harrigan had been peering up at the sky, only half-listening. He had heard something flapping, a large bird maybe, but hadn’t been able to spot it. Probably a big seagull, he thought. Arkham wasn’t far from the ocean. On the other hand, he knew all too well that birds were not the only things with wings.

“She never blinks,” said Carolyn.

“Everybody blinks, Doc.”

“Not this lady. Last time I was here we got into a staring match. I think I might have scarred a cornea.”

As it turned out, they found the desk occupied by a young male orderly. Carolyn seemed less relieved than Harrigan might have expected. “Excuse me, sir,” she asked. “Is Nurse Palmer not here today?”

“Ah, no, ma’am. She’s in Boston, visiting her children.”

Carolyn’s eyes went a little wide. “She has children?”

“Yes, ma’am. Can I take your name, please?”

“What? Oh, sorry.” Harrigan saw her shake her head slightly, as if trying to dislodge an unpleasant image. “I’m Dr. Carolyn Fern, here to see Diana Stanley.”

“Thank you, Doctor. If you’d like to sign the book…” The orderly passed a leather-bound visitors’ ledger across the desk, then turned to Harrigan. “And you, sir?”

“Mark Stanley. I’m Diana’s brother.”

The orderly paused. Harrigan saw his eyes flick up. “Er… Do you have any identification?”

Harrigan smiled. “No.”

“A driver’s license, maybe?”

“No.”

Carolyn leaned over the desk. “It’s okay, sir. I’ll vouch for him.”

“Of course. Ah, Mr. Stanley? Would you like me to look after your suitcase?”

Harrigan hadn’t let his smile alter a fraction. “No.”

“Mr. Stanley,” Carolyn said, rather too firmly, “has a distrust of anyone in the medical profession. You’ll have to excuse him.”

The orderly took back his book, looked briefly at Harrigan as if weighing up the chances of getting him to sign it too, then sighed. “Okay, Dr. Fern. Miss Stanley is in Ward Two, bed six.”

“That’s okay, sir, I know the—” Carolyn stopped mid-sentence. “Hold on, Ward Two? What’s she doing in a ward?”

The orderly looked confused. “I’m sorry, Doctor, I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Diana Stanley was in a room on the fourth floor until the day before yesterday.”

“I’m sure that’s not correct, Doctor.” The man shook his head. “The rooms are for patients who are able to take care of themselves in some capacity. Diana Stanley is catatonic.”

* * *

Harrigan hadn’t been entirely certain what catatonic meant, until he saw Diana Stanley in her bed in Ward Two.

There were ten beds in the ward, metal-framed medical cots lined up against one long wall. Between every two beds was a window, and Harrigan guessed than on sunny days warm light would have spilled down onto the patients lying there. Perhaps it gave them some comfort.

Today, only a rectangle of sickly grey fell across the woman in bed six.

“Good God,” whispered Carolyn. She had stopped in the ward doorway, as if the sight had robbed her of strength. Harrigan reached up, hesitated, and then touched her lightly on the shoulder.

“Go on.”

She nodded, and walked to Diana’s bedside.

Harrigan waited a few moments before following her. Even being in a place like this brought back foul memories. There had been times, when the illness had been at its peak, that Sophie had spent time in a place not dissimilar to Ward Two.

He thought about her tugging on the straps, pleading with him to take her away.

On the other side of the ward was a nurse’s station—boxed-in desks from where nurses could keep an eye on their charges without expending the effort required to get up and walk over to them. One nurse sat there, talking to a tall young man in a tweed suit and white lab coat. He could feel their eyes on him as he carried the suitcase past them to Diana’s bed.

Carolyn was perched on a chair next to the sick woman, leaning over her, speaking to her softly. The bed on the far side was empty. Harrigan sat on it, putting the suitcase down carefully on the floor.

Diana Stanley was very still.

There was a white bed sheet drawn up under her thin arms. Her skin, or what Harrigan could see of it, was almost the same hue, and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. There were leather straps around her wrists, chained to the bed frame, and a length of surgical dressing reached up from just above her right eye to vanish under her dark hair.

Her head was rolled to the right, and her eyes were open, staring blankly past Carolyn toward the open door.

“What happened?” he asked finally.

Carolyn sat back. “I can’t believe she’s deteriorated this fast.”

Harrigan moved a little closer to her. “Maybe she wasn’t as safe as you thought,” he whispered.

“I don’t know.” He could see her fighting the very thought. She was a rational woman, her entire life built around the logical and the scientific. Every problem she had encountered up until now had been solvable. All she’d needed to do was to find the right method to do so, and then apply it.

Logic no longer applied here, and Carolyn Fern was having a hard time coming to terms with that.

She got up. “Wait here. I’ll see what Dr. Lawson can tell us.”

Harrigan watched her cross the ward to the young man at the nurse’s station. After a few moments he stood, walked around the foot of Diana’s bed, and sat down on the chair Carolyn had left.

“Miss Stanley?”

He kept his voice very low. The doctors wouldn’t even like him talking to their patient—he knew that from bitter experience. But he had a few minutes while Carolyn’s back was turned.

“Diana? My name’s Harrigan, Mark Harrigan. Can you hear me?”

Had there been a flicker in those haunted eyes? He couldn’t be sure. It was probably just his imagination, wishful thinking. He leaned down to her anyway.

“Miss Stanley, if you’re in there, please, I need to know about the monster.” He looked quickly back to Carolyn, but she was still talking. “When you were shot, was it there? Was it with whoever attacked you? Diana, did its head change color?”

There was no reaction. “Damn you!” he hissed. “Will you just talk to me?”

Suddenly he wanted to grab her, to pick her up from the bed and shake the answers out of her, but as soon as the thought entered his mind it was gone again, and he hated himself for ever having it.

He had shaken Sophie once, near the end, when her constant whispering had become too much. He had never forgiven himself for that.

He reached out and took her hand. It was cold, loose, like the hand of a corpse.

“Listen, Diana. I’m sorry, okay. I didn’t…” He squeezed her hand. “You leave the monster to me.”

“You did what?” yelled Carolyn. “Herbert West?”

Harrigan jumped up and crossed the ward in two strides. “What the hell, Doc?”

Lawson, the doctor in the tweed suit, was backing up against the nurse’s station, his hands up. Clearly he had been as startled by Carolyn’s outburst as Harrigan had been. “He came to us on the highest recommendation.”

“Whose?” Carolyn snapped, her tiny fists bunched in fury. “The Keystone Kops?”

“Woah, Doc.” Harrigan put a hand on her arm. “Who’s this Herbert West character?”

She jerked her arm away. “A damn maniac, that’s who. Dr. Lawson, if you were any kind of psychologist you’d have had West admitted to this facility, not allowed him to run riot among your patients!”

Lawson ran a hand back through his hair. “Dr. Fern, I am sorry. I only discovered Diana’s condition when I came in this morning. From what I gather, Dr. West came in late last night and attempted some kind of experimental treatment on her.”

“‘Experimental treatment’?”

“You let him experiment on her?” snapped Harrigan. “Jesus, Lawson, look what he did! You’re not even allowed to do that dogs!”

Carolyn looked to be on the verge of striking the man. “How could you let this happen?”

“I told you, I wasn’t here.” Lawson looked away. “It’s possible he may have been able to bribe some of the staff.”

“Oh,” said Carolyn.

Harrigan saw a very strange expression cross her face, and tried to ignore it. “Well, when is this treatment going to wear off? How long until she gets better?”

There was a long silence. Finally, Carolyn straightened up and folded her arms. “Tell him, Dr. Lawson,” she said quietly.

“Mr. Stanley…”

It took Harrigan a moment to realize the doctor was talking to him. “Uh, yeah?”

“I’m extremely sorry, but I have to inform you that your sister’s condition could be permanent.”

He felt his fists bunch. “Permanent. As in, forever.”

“That’s right.” The man looked stricken. “There is every indication that Diana will remain in a catatonic state for the rest of her life.”

* * *

“I met West once,” Carolyn said later, as they neared the boarding house she had been staying at. “Back when I was studying medicine at Rhode Island.”

They had walked back into town from the asylum. It had quickly become clear that nothing could be done for Diana Stanley. The breakdown of her faculties that had begun after she had been attacked was now, thanks to the attentions of Herbert West, utterly complete. The woman’s mind was irrevocably fractured. She was lost to the world, sealed into a perpetual nightmare from which death was the only escape.

There was no longer any point in being at the asylum. As they had left, Harrigan had told Carolyn that he would need a place to stay.

The street they were walking down was narrow and gloomy, even at noon. High buildings on either side blocked out the low sun, and the few people they passed seemed to hurry along furtively, as though unwilling to be seen there.

It was the kind of place where one stepped quietly, and carefully, and didn’t attempt to catch anyone’s eye. “What was he like? Just in case he turns up again.”

“Small, fair-haired. Obsessed with death. Well, with defeating it, anyway.”

“That’s what doctors do, isn’t it?”

“Not the way he went about it.” She gave him a sideways look. “He spent a lot of time in morgues, Mr. Harrigan.”

“Sounds like a real charmer.”

“There had always been stories about him. Ridiculous stuff. How he’d been experimenting on cadavers… The kind of thing young people try to scare each other with, you know?”

Harrigan hadn’t needed stories to scare himself with in a very long time. “I guess.”

“Everyone said he was dead, though. Some kind of accident involving his research. Then one day he just turned up at the hospital, started hanging around the sickest patients. You could see him watching them, waiting.” She shivered visibly. “There weren’t any more stories after that.”

Harrigan puffed out a long breath. “And Lawson set him loose on Diana.”

“Someone did. Anyway, this is it.”

She had stopped in front of a narrow, three-story townhouse. Barring a few steps leading up to the front door, the building faced directly onto the street, its lowest windows caged in rusting iron. The store to its left was empty, boarded up, and sprouting foliage from cracks in its brickwork, while some kind of private storage depot had been built on the right.

The boarding house looked defiantly out of place, as though it had stood firm while the neighborhood around it had crumbled away and been replaced by squalor and uncaring industry.

Harrigan had stayed in far worse places. He followed her up the steps, the suitcase stretching his arm.

* * *

The room was small, but it was reasonably clean. It had a chair and a bed, which was all Harrigan really needed.

The floorboards creaked a little when he set the suitcase down. He laid it carefully on its side and pushed it under the bed frame, out of sight, then got up and stretched. His arm was aching from hauling it around all day, his bad leg drumming a beat of pain through the bone. He felt immensely tired.

There was a bolt on the inside of the door frame, but it was a small thing, flimsy. He could have broken it from the other side with a single shove. Harrigan picked up the chair, turned it around, and wedged its back firmly under the door handle. It would give him a few extra seconds, should anyone try to get in the hard way.

Harrigan sat on the edge of the bed and reached around to the small of his back, under his coat, to the modified holster nestling against his spine. He slipped his old Colt free and checked the gun quickly, automatically, knowing by feel that its magazine was full, the chamber empty, the safety on. He stashed the gun under his pillow, then loosened his necktie and lay back on the bed.

There was a scrape on the floor above him, a solid impact. Harrigan grinned. Carolyn was wedging her door shut, too.

She was a smart one. Despite what he thought about doctors, Harrigan couldn’t deny it: she’d proven herself his better just by tracking him down. He’d moved five times since leaving Harrisburg, and somehow she’d managed to pick up his trail even when he’d left no forwarding address. Given some of the things he’d had to do since Sophie had gone, he was damn lucky Carolyn wasn’t a cop.

He really couldn’t blame her for finding the truth about Mexico hard to grasp.

In a way, he hoped she would never know for certain. Carolyn’s mind was a precision tool, sharp and honed, but the keenest blade breaks most easily. Ignorance was a refuge that Harrigan no longer had access to, but it could be Carolyn’s savior. Doubt could armor her sanity.

He would not involve her further, he decided. She had been good to Farrow, and that alone was worth sparing her any further horror.

If only he could have done the same for Sophie.

While he and Farrow had been limping and cursing their way back to camp they had both agreed to tell no one about what had really happened in the cave. Far better to blame the Villistas for their injuries and the loss of Orton’s squad, than to speak of monsters. That was the kind of talk that had men locked away for shell shock. Or, in harsher times, taken away quietly and shot.

So they held their tongues. The Pancho Villa expedition was nearly over by then anyway.

Sophie had known, though. Not long after he’d come back to her, and they had been married in the little Presbyterian church on North Street, she had become convinced that he was hiding a dark truth from her. He had never been sure how. Maybe he had talked in his sleep. But she had finally persuaded him to tell her, and when he had, she’d believed him.

He hadn’t realized how good it would feel to unburden himself, until it happened.

And later, in France, when he had seen the naked, dog-faced things scuttling out from abandoned German trenches to drag away dead bodies, she had drawn that from him too, and never doubted him. She was the only one he trusted, the only one who believed that what he had seen was real.

Then she was gone, and Harrigan went a little crazy.

Now there was no one he could talk to about anything. When he’d tried to tell his friends and family what had happened to her, all he’d found was silence and a reputation as a crazy man. He lost his job. People he trusted turned on him.

He fled.

Harrigan had lost everything. He sank into a mire of despair and impotent fury, moving from town to town, working for men that no one with a soul should even associate with. Circling closer to a lonely, violent death.

And then, without warning, Carolyn Fern had called him to tell him that the only man he still regarded as a friend was dead. And that there was a monster in Arkham.

* * *

“Mark,” she says, and her voice is like dry leaves blowing across stone.

He hears her from the next room. She can’t manage more than a whisper now, and his ears are attuned to the smallest sound she makes. “I’m here.”

He sits on the edge of the bed and takes her hand in his. She’s ice cold, shivering. He keeps the apartment as warm as he can, spending the food budget on heat. She never eats, anyway, hasn’t been able to for weeks. She barely even drinks, just a few drops of water that he is able to pour between her lips now and then, in the quiet times.

There are few quiet times now. This is the first time in days that she has not been whispering constantly to herself.

She says his name again, turns her heavy head toward him. Her skin is as white as the pillow, her honey-colored hair speckling toward grey. Her eyes look like holes in her skull. “Something’s moving,” she breathes.

“Moving where?”

“Inside. In the spaces between. I can feel it, Mark.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”

Her only answer is a hissing breath. Her eyes widen. “Oh, God.”

“I’ll get someone.” He starts to get up, but her hand is clamped around his, stronger than he can remember.

“I’m falling!”

“No, you’re safe. I’m here.” He can feel a sick panic spilling up inside him. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“It’s here with me, in the dark! The infinite vault… God, Mark, help me!”

Her voice rises in a thin scream as her back arches. He cries out in horror, reaching for her, but she’s twisting, convulsing on the bed, mouth agape, eyes bulging sightlessly. Her ragged fingernails peel skin from his arms and he doesn’t feel it. All he can hear is the woman he loves trying to scream.

And then her body begins to collapse.

He hears it before he sees it; an unspeakable noise, sucking wet crunch of shattering bone and twisting gristle as half her ribcage disappears in on itself. She moans, bright blood on her lips, the contrast against her pallor a shock to the eye. Another convulsion, another cacophony of core-deep splintering as the muscle and the tendon and the wet pulsing complexities of her are dragged inward, twisted and torn and wrenched away.

Beyond all horror, he tears himself from her, staggers back from the bed. She reaches out to him, clawing at the space between them, but he cannot cover the distance. Even if he had strength in his legs to move toward her, she is already rushing away, devoured from within.

It is amazing, near the very end, when there is almost nothing left of Sophie on the bed at all, that she still has breath to shriek his name.

* * *

“Harrigan! Mr. Harrigan!”

Harrigan blinked awake, eyes heavy. The room was almost dark. He must have been asleep all afternoon.

He wondered, as he swung his legs off the bed, how long he would have remained that way had Carolyn Fern not been pounding on his door.

“Just a minute, Doc.” He got up, shaking his head to try and clear it. Carolyn’s voice had spilled into his dream, her high insistent calling half-merged with Sophie’s cries, and the ugly fusion of past and present still had its claws in him.

He yanked the chair away and slid the bolt free, pulling the door ajar. “What?”

“Oh, thank God.” Carolyn half-fell through the gap. Harrigan had to step back quickly to avoid being hit by the door. “I’ve been out there knocking for five minutes!”

“Fell asleep, sorry.” He blinked at her. In the light spilling in through the open door he could see that she was pale, shaking. Her red hair was mussed and her spectacles were awry. “Damn, Doc, you look lousy. What’s wrong?”

“It’s Diana.”

Suddenly Harrigan was very much awake. “What about her?”

“I just had a telephone call from Dr. Lawson. He was on his rounds, went to look in on her and…” She spread her hands, helplessly. “Mark, she’s gone.”

Chapter Seven: Book Smart

Carolyn’s first patient, or at least the first that she was allowed to treat largely unsupervised, had been a man named Albert Kennington. He was a small, silver-headed Georgian in his fifties, whose manner of speaking reminded Carolyn very much of her mother. Carolyn quickly grew to like the man, enjoying his gentlemanly demeanor and his unflinching politeness, and she had devoted a great deal of her time to treating the visions and night terrors that plagued him.

After several weeks of hypnosis, dream interpretation, and regressive therapy, Carolyn had made such great progress with Kennington’s troubles that she was on the verge of recommending he be released from the institute on a trial basis. She had told him this news in the office she used to hypnotize patients considered trustworthy by the senior staff, and when she did he had thanked her profusely, almost tearfully, claiming that she had saved his sanity and very probably his life.

Filled with happiness at the man’s progress and, if she was honest, some small degree of pride, Carolyn had turned away from Kennington to gather his files. While she was distracted, he had risen silently from his chair and locked the office door with a stolen key. A moment later his arm was locked tight around Carolyn’s throat, and a knife made from a piece of sharpened bed frame was digging agonizingly into the soft flesh under her right ear.

He then proceeded to describe how he was going to “remake” her.

In Kennington’s case, remaking appeared to mean killing her messily and then spending the rest of the night defiling her corpse in the most sordid and unspeakable ways imaginable. He told her these things, over a period of at least fifteen minutes, in an extremely calm and personable manner, politely and carefully relating what was going to happen and refusing her pleas to be released with something almost akin to regret. This was, he said as she struggled in his grip, no wild and uncontrollable urge on his part; Kennington had been planning the event since he had first met her, something Carolyn was later able to confirm after she found detailed notes on the subject hidden inside his mattress.

Carolyn Fern learned two things that day. Firstly, that she should never turn her back on a patient, no matter how calm and respectful they might appear to be. And secondly, that letting your head drop forward and then slamming it back at nose height is, while painful, a very effective way of making somebody let go of you.

Albert Kennington had been incapacitated long enough for Carolyn to unlock the door and raise the alarm. In fact, before being confined to the most secure level of the institute, he spent several days restrained in the hospital while the doctors there tried to push his facial bones back into their original shape.

During the ordeal, and for some time after it, Carolyn had been both terrified and extremely angry. Part of the anger was directed at Kennington, of course—for assaulting her, for having such thoughts about her, and for putting them into her head in a way that meant she would never ever forget them. Mostly, though, she was enraged at herself. She had allowed his surface behavior to blind her to his true intentions. She had failed him as a patient and, in order to save her own life, she had physically injured him.

The cycle of emotional battering might have broken a less determined person. Instead, Carolyn tried to put the experience to use. In time, she turned the fear into caution, and anger into a fierce desire to mend damaged minds. The guilt she carried with her always, to make sure she would do no harm.

Perhaps, if Kennington hadn’t tried to remake her that day, she would not have come to Arkham to prove that she had done right by Malachi Farrow. And she would not be here, standing before Mark Harrigan in a cramped boarding house bedroom, feeling just as frightened and furious as she had done with a madman’s arm around her neck.

* * *

The room was still in half-darkness. Carolyn moved aside as Harrigan reached past her to flick the light switch. He squinted at her as the single bulb came on, running his hand back through cropped, sandy hair. “You want to run that by me again, Doc? When you say ‘gone,’ do you mean—”

She cut him off with an exasperated growl. “Gone, Mr. Harrigan. Vanished. Lawson had the asylum searched top to bottom, but she’s not there.”

“He’s sure?”

Carolyn nodded, pushing her spectacles straight as she did so. Lawson was no fool. Locating patients who tried to escape his care would be one of the first and most important lessons he’d have learned. “No sign of her in the ward, her old room, anywhere.”

“Damn,” Harrigan muttered. He stumbled back to the bed and sat heavily, the frame protesting under him. “Those sons of bitches… The cops are out looking for her, right?”

“I hope so. Lawson hadn’t called them when he telephoned me, so I told him to go and do it.”

He glared up at her. “What the hell was he waiting for?”

“I don’t think he’s looking forward to explaining how someone was able to break into his asylum and kidnap a catatonic woman.”

“I’ll bet. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

An expression of utter horror had crossed Mark Harrigan’s face.

“Oh, God,” he whispered. “Please no.”

“Mr. Harrigan? Mark?”

There was no answer. Harrigan was sitting as if frozen, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere between the bed and the wall.

Quite unsettled, Carolyn took the chair from where he had moved it away from the door, turned it, and sat down close to him. She found herself studying him carefully, the way she did with her patients, noting every gesture, every facial nuance.

“Mark?” she said carefully.

“Hm.”

“Do you think Diana might still be alive?”

“No.” There was a strange certainty in his voice. “No, I don’t think she is.”

“You sound very sure.”

He looked at her suddenly, then away. He’d realized what she was doing. “All I’m saying is, if somebody wanted to keep her quiet for good, it really doesn’t take all that long.”

“Mr. Harrigan, please. That’s not what you meant at all.” Carolyn tried to keep her voice level, but this was no therapy session, no slow teasing out of repressed memories under hospital conditions. Lives were in danger. “You’ve seen something like this before.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy.”

“Mr. Harrigan, stop lying to me! If you know something that could help find Diana—”

“Damn it, Doc!” He leapt up from the bed, towering over her. “Don’t you get it? Nobody’s going to find Diana! Not the cops, not Lawson, not me, and certainly not you. She’s gone, okay?”

She was on her feet too, her fists bunched. “I don’t even know what that means!”

“You know what? Pray you never do!” He whirled away from her, his coat swinging, and reached down to slide his big leather suitcase out from under the bed frame. “So far, the only people who know what it means are either dead or messed up beyond all recognition.”

“Does that include you?”

“Damn straight it does.” He dropped to one knee in front of the case and snapped the catches open. “Doc, you’re a good person, and a real smart one. You can do a lot of good in the world. But not here, and not like this.”

“Then what would you suggest?”

“I’m not suggesting anything. You’ve got your methods, and I’ve got mine.”

He lifted the lid of the suitcase. Carolyn saw what was inside and leapt back, sending the chair skittering into the wall. “Dear God.”

“Come on, Doc, what did you think I was hauling around? My summer wardrobe?”

Carolyn edged forward, peering over Harrigan’s shoulder. He must have modified the case himself, quite extensively. The interior was reinforced with what looked like thick plywood, and looped leather straps had been riveted in to hold the contents in place.

She counted two shotguns, four pistols of varying sizes, a rifle held diagonally in the lid, and something in pieces that she was sure she had seen once in a newspaper. “Mr. Harrigan, is that a machine gun?”

“No, Doc, it’s a Thompson.”

“What’s the difference?”

“A machine gun wouldn’t fit in the case.” He was sliding one of the shotguns free—an ugly, short-barreled thing, its wooden stock sawn brutally down just behind the trigger. There was a leather strap clipped to it there. Another one of his modifications.

He closed the suitcase and stood up, putting his left arm through the leather strap to let the shotgun hang vertically against his side. Carolyn saw the way his long coat covered it completely. “You’ve done this before.”

“I’ve done a lot of things before.” He reached around himself, feeling at the base of his spine. “Hey, my Colt’s still under the pillow. Could you…?”

“I will not!” She stepped sharply away from the bed. “What are you planning to do with all this?”

“Right now we’ve got one lead left.” He leaned past her, slid his hand under the pillow, and retrieved a massive black pistol. “That businessman Diana mentioned.”

“Avery?” Carolyn had included some newspaper cuttings about the man in the envelope of papers she had sent. “Oh, come on. She mentioned him once, when she was brought in. She knows him from the Chamber of Commerce.”

“Chamber of Commerce, huh?” He gave her a smile that was utterly devoid of warmth or humor. “Here’s a tip, Doc. Anyone that high up the social ladder has got his hand in the till, or worse.”

Carolyn threw her hands up. “Philip Avery’s a war hero, Mr. Harrigan! He was blown up in France. By all accounts there are days he can barely walk. What could he possibly have to do with all this?”

Harrigan was holstering the pistol at his back, under his coat. “The guy runs an import business, a warehouse down on the Arkham dockside. I’ll head there and see what I can find.”

“Why there?

“Diana was soaked to the skin when the cops found her, right?”

“There was a storm. She’d been out in the driving rain.”

“Or she might have fallen into the river.” He tightened his necktie, straightening it under his shirt collar. “Bullet to the head, a trip to the bottom of the Miskatonic… Seems pretty classic to me.”

Carolyn had to admit that there was an ugly kind of sense to that. “Which means we should go to the police.” She stepped in front of the door. “Now. Together.”

“And tell them what?” He had fastened the coat, tugged the collar up around his face. “Carolyn, the police won’t find anything. In a town like this, they might not even be looking that hard. Remember how they treated Farrow?”

“So I should go with you.”

“No, what you should do is go back up to your room and stay there.”

She folded her arms. “I can help.”

“Doc, you’ll just slow me down.” He opened the door. “I mean it. Go back to your room. Put the bolt on and jam the chair under the handle and put the bed against it. Don’t go outside and don’t answer it for anyone, you hear me? Then get the first train back to Providence tomorrow.”

Carolyn narrowed her eyes. “Well maybe I should hide in the closet, too,” she growled. “Or under the bed, would that make you feel better?”

“Doc, you don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

“What a surprise!” Her voice had risen to a high, embarrassing shout, but she was damned if she was going to let him treat her like some helpless waif. “Of course you could just tell me, but no, you’d prefer me to run and hide behind my door just like you hide behind secrets and silence!” She poked him hard in the chest. “You know something, Mr. Harrigan? One day, somebody very much like me is going to knock you right on your keister, and I hope I’m around to see it!”

For a long moment, he just stood there looking at her. She wondered if he might hit her, and where to kick him if he tried it. Then, from below, heavy footsteps began to ascend the stairs.

Carolyn groaned inwardly. She had aroused the wrath of Mrs. Cleaver.

Harrigan heard the footfalls, too. He grinned, then took her gently by the shoulders and walked her backward. Before she knew it she was out on the landing, and he was pulling the door closed.

He locked it, and slipped the key into his pocket. “Thanks for getting me this far, Doc.”

And then he was gone, trotting away down the stairs.

Carolyn stared over the banister at him, gripping the rail hard and shaking with rage. “You insufferable oaf,” she yelled. “I hope you blow your damn foot off!”

She saw his cropped head vanish around the corner below her. A moment later she hear him utter a curt “Ma’am,” then the solid slam of the front door. She stepped back, suddenly unwilling to meet Mrs. Cleaver’s eye should the landlady continue her journey up. She thought about going back up to her room, but the notion of doing what he had told her, even for a different reason, made her want to spit.

“Everything okay up there, honey?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” Carolyn turned to see Mrs. Cleaver was leaning around the banister, her cigarette burned halfway down. The day’s choice of bathrobe was, she noted, blue. “That was entirely my fault.”

“Funny, I would have blamed the hoodlum I just met coming down the stairs.”

“Mr. Harrigan?” Carolyn smiled. “I’m sure he’s many things, Mrs. Cleaver, but not that.”

“Guy’s got a piece under his coat. That’s how it looks to me.” Mrs. Cleaver climbed the last of the stairs. Her slippers were also blue. “Don’t look so shocked, honey—I’ve had his kind staying here before, and worse. Can’t get choosy at this end of Arkham.”

“Well, in any case, I apologize. It won’t happen again.”

“You threw him over? Good for you.”

“Oh, no, nothing like that.” Carolyn smiled. “It was…a professional disagreement.”

Behind their curtain of smoke, Mrs. Cleaver’s eyes narrowed, ever so slightly.

“Oh, God!” Carolyn put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, that sounds terrible! No, I meant medical… He’s the friend of one of my patients.”

“The one who died?”

“That’s right.”

Mrs. Cleaver took a long drag on her cigarette, reducing it to a glowing stub. “So what’s his beef?”

“It’s so hard to tell. He’s a great one for secrets, I’m afraid.”

Mrs. Cleaver chuckled. “Kind of a national pastime in these parts. They say an Arkham gal would sooner chew off her arm than let on what she had for lunch. It’s not how we did things in Brooklyn, let me tell you.”

Carolyn wrapped her arms around herself. A chill had grown in the air. There was a window at the end of the landing, and she could hear a rhythmic hissing: rain was beating the glass in waves, wet air from the sea colliding with cold from the hills, giving birth to another of Arkham’s almost nightly autumn storms. “How do you stand it?”

“Me? I go digging.” The cigarette was gone. Mrs. Cleaver pinched its remnants dead between finger and thumb, cupping the ruins in her palm. “I don’t hold with secrets, honey. Not since I found out what Mr. Cleaver was doing over at Patty Putnam’s place all those afternoons.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. Even if the truth makes you sick, it’s better than secrets and lies. Every damn time.”

“Yes,” said Carolyn. She put her arms down, straightened her back. “You’re right, it is…”

Mark Harrigan, she decided, could do what he pleased.

Let him go stalking off into the rain with his shotgun and his secrets. Carolyn had already come a long way without relying on his kind of help, and she wasn’t going to start deferring to him now. She would gain power over this situation in the only way she knew: not with weapons, but with words.

All she needed was more information. And one of the greatest repositories of knowledge on the East Coast was practically on her doorstep.

“Mrs. Cleaver?” she smiled. “I’m going to be going out in a little while. If—I mean when Mr. Harrigan comes back, would you please tell him that I’ve gone to the library?”

* * *

There had been plenty of times in Carolyn’s life when she’d wished she was—or at least looked—a little older. It was hard for a woman to be respected in her profession, and doubly so for one who continued to look and sound like a callow student well into her twenties.

Tonight, though, Carolyn found her appearance a distinct advantage. No one paid her any mind at all as she trotted up the rain-slick steps of the Miskatonic University’s Orne Library.

Getting into the university grounds had been so easy it was almost frightening. Carolyn had merely waited for a group of students to hurry in through the gates and joined them as they ran. None of them had noticed that she wasn’t one of their number. Perhaps if they had paid her any particular attention they might have done, but it was raining hard by that point and none of them chose to raise their heads.

Once inside the confines of the campus she had gone her own way, and quickly found herself in front of the library building. She was glad, although not entirely surprised, to find the main doors still unlocked; smaller libraries might have closed altogether on a Sunday, but it seemed that the heads of the Miskatonic University were happy to allow their students access to the great repository even on a day of rest.

She wasn’t sure how long it would stay open, though.

The weather was getting worse. Carolyn pushed one of the main doors ajar and ducked gratefully through, leaving the rain to splash and spatter on the marble steps behind her.

From the outside, Orne Library was huge—a great three-story slab of dark granite and white marble pillars, gleaming with rain and the yellow light of nearby streetlamps. By the time Carolyn was through the entrance hallway and into the first floor reading area, the place seemed to have grown around her, escaping its confines to expand into an almost limitless space.

It was a trick of the senses, of course. There was no daylight coming in through the high windows, so the dim internal lighting concealed the library’s furthest reaches. At the same time, the acoustics of the place conspired to make the library feel vast, the fine marble of the floors and walls multiplying every librarian’s footfall and student’s whisper into a chain of soft, endless echoes.

Carolyn felt a shiver as she walked, but could not be sure if her nerves were reacting to the drafty coldness of the building or the thrilling concept of an infinite library.

Captivating though the idea was, she forced the thoughts away as she approached the front desk. The woman who sat behind it looked as if she would brook no such nonsense. “Ah, excuse me, ma’am. Can you please tell me if you have anything on Meso-American mythology and folklore?”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth Carolyn realized how stupid they sounded. The library contained over four hundred thousand books. “Oh, forgive me. What I meant was—”

“Third floor.” The woman spoke with a slight, and not unkind, smile. No doubt she had become inured to even the most inane of queries. “And to your right.”

Within half an hour Carolyn was seated at a wide circular table on the library’s uppermost level, her wet coat draped over the back of a chair and a glass-shaded reading lamp sending a cone of light onto the pages of Morley’s The Inscriptions of Copán. Piled next to her was a small stack of similar volumes: Gods of the Olmec by Hallett and Delaney, Swallow and Mills’ superlative Serpents of Chichén Itzá, The Golden Ones by H. Wallace, and several bound collections of The American Journal of Archaeology, Edited and Complied by the Brothers Clarke.

Despite every instinct to the contrary, Carolyn was turning the pages of Morley’s work as fast as she could, skimming the text, trying desperately to ignore the lure of the man’s limpid prose. It would have been far too easy to lose herself in the book, but she had no time for such indulgences. Luckily, teasing fragments of useful information from vast and seductive tomes was a skill Carolyn had been forced to learn very early on in her student days.

Already she had read about the strange carvings on the Pyramid of Quetzalcóatl at Teotihuacán, the images of a creature with vast round eyes and a mouth surrounded by writhing tentacles; she had learned of the disturbing links between the Aztec serpent-god Quetzalcóatl and the “Ix” or “Yig” of the Mayans; she had seen images of the vile Mictlantechutli, Lord of the Dead and the aquatic Chac, said to lie dreaming at the bottom of a particular cenote in Chichén Itzá.

So far, though, she had seen not even a hint of winged and eyeless crustaceans. There was no mention of any carving, relief, or legend that could possibly have described the awful creature supposedly witnessed by Farrow, Councilman Hopkirk, and poor Diana Stanley.

Still, she had barely begun to work her way through the pile. Carolyn settled herself a little more comfortably on the unforgiving chair, and prepared for a long night.

She got through two more pages when the sudden clearing of a throat jolted her upright.

There was a man standing on the other side of her table. Carolyn had been so engrossed in the Morley that she hadn’t noticed him approach.

He was in his late sixties, she guessed, perhaps a little older. He wore a pale grey suit over a white shirt and grey bow tie, and his impressive silvery mustache was combed down to almost meet his beard.

He was watching her intently, hands behind his back.

Carolyn felt a spark of recognition. She was sure she had seen the man before, but she couldn’t place him. “May I help you, sir?”

The man cleared his throat again. “Far be it from me to interrupt such intense studies, young lady, but I must inform you that the library closes in…” He had a gold pocket watch in his hand, tilting it slightly to catch the light from Carolyn’s reading lamp. “…twenty-three minutes.”

Damn. “Oh. Well, thank you for letting me know, sir.” Carolyn glanced down at the pile. She was only a third of the way through the Morley, and had barely opened the H. Wallace. The other books remained untouched. “Ah, perhaps I might be allowed to take these ones out?”

“By all means. Simply present your matriculation card at the desk, and I’m certain Mary will be able to process your request before the library closes.”

“Matriculation card.” A nervous laugh tried to escape from the corner of Carolyn’s mouth. “Yes. That.”

“Which, of course, might prove difficult if one were not a student.” The man raised a hand to study his fingernails, an exaggerated display of nonchalance. “If one were instead, for example, a trainee psychologist from Providence…”

“Oh my!” Carolyn jumped up, her chair scraping the marble as she shoved it back. “How do you know that? Who are you?”

“Please, my dear, calm yourself!” He smiled, although that was rather hard to see under the mustache. “I spoke at Butler Hospital in 1924, when the new library was opened.”

Carolyn practically sagged with relief. She was starting to see conspiracies at every turn.

Careful, she told herself crossly. You’ll end up like Diana. “Of course, you’re Professor Henry Armitage.”

“Correct on all three counts.” He leaned across the table, one hand extended. “Pleased to meet you again, Dr. Fern.”

Professor Armitage was somewhat legendary among bibliophiles like Carolyn, and almost a hero to anyone who took a genuine pleasure in the delights of a well-stocked library. A graduate of Princeton University and a Doctor of Letters at Johns Hopkins, he had taken the position of head librarian at Miskatonic when the Orne was no more than an unremarkable catalog of university textbooks. Over the next decade his skill, dedication and quite startling erudition had transformed the collection into one of the most renowned and diverse in the country.

Remembering his stirring speech at the opening of the Butler library, Carolyn felt more than a little star-struck.

“The pleasure’s all mine, sir.” She took his hand and shook it gratefully. “But I have to ask: however did you remember me?”

“I pride myself on a highly developed memory, Doctor. It’s something of an advantage in my profession. And given that you were already the only woman in your class at Butler…”

“I never thought of myself as standing out, sir.”

“Whether you wish to or not, Doctor, you will.” He checked his watch again, then returned it to the pocket of his waistcoat. “However, that does leave the question of why you are here without permission from the Faculty. They would have supplied you with temporary library privileges, I’m sure.”

“I’m sorry, I just didn’t have time to wait.” Carolyn hesitated, wondering what she should tell him. If the danger was as real as it seemed, it would be far safer for him if he were not involved.

On the other hand, he knew the library and its contents better than anyone. “Sir, I’ll be honest. I’m involved in a case that seems to have expanded well out of my field of expertise. At the very least it’s the most intense and powerful shared delusion I’ve ever seen, and at most… To tell you the truth, I believe lives are in jeopardy.”

“Really? Whose?”

“Mine, I think.” She moved around the table, closer to him so she could speak more quietly. “Two men are already dead, sir, and a woman’s gone missing. I need to find the source of this delusion, if that’s what it is. I need to get to the bottom of this before anyone else gets hurt.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re trying to do the work of the police, young lady.”

“No, sir, they’re already on the case. But I just don’t have a lot of faith in their ability to handle something like this. It’s too…strange.”

Armitage was stroking his beard, listening and at the same time deep in thought. “A lot of strange things go on in Arkham, Dr. Fern. I would have hoped Sheriff Engle would be rather more practiced in the esoteric by now.” He glanced over at the pile of books. “So what connection could Meso-American folklore have to our fair town?”

“I’m really not sure. But two men who share the delusion fought in Mexico.” A thought occurred to her. “Professor, that councilman, Edward Hopkirk? He wasn’t involved in the Pancho Villa expedition, was he?”

“Hopkirk? The man who took his own life?” Armitage had a look of horrible realization about him. “Good Lord, girl, you’re chasing after that nightmare he saw?”

“Yes, sir, I believe I am.”

The librarian had taken a step back from her. Carolyn noticed that, above his silvery facial hair, he had gone very slightly pale. “And you say that others have seen these creatures?”

“They claim to.” Carolyn’s throat had gone nervously tight, and her ribcage felt like it was trying to close like a fist. Armitage knew something about the case, she was sure of it. “But it hasn’t gone well for them, Professor. A man was murdered, and a woman was attacked and then kidnapped. All because of what they said they saw.”

“Well. That is intriguing. And, I might add, rather troubling.” Armitage tapped a finger against his chin for a few seconds, lost in contemplation. Then he lifted his grey head. “Nevertheless, I must close the library, Dr. Fern.”

“Professor, please. Can’t you keep it open just a little longer?”

“I’m afraid not. Rules are rules, and it is Sunday after all. Please be so kind as to wait here while I make the arrangements.”

“Wait…” Something in her soared. “I can stay?”

“I insist on it.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “This is a serious matter, Doctor. More serious than you know. And I believe that if we are to prevent further bloodshed, you and I have some very serious reading ahead of us.”

Chapter Eight: Fear of Flying

Harrigan came out of the boarding house into bitter cold, and rain, and the ugly feeling that somebody was watching him.

He had paused on the front steps to pull the door shut behind him, to tug the collar of his coat higher around his neck, and as he did so that old itch touched him, feather-light between his shoulder blades. It was a subtle tightening of the skin at the back of his neck, a crawling down the backbone. It was the feeling that, in his old life, usually meant someone was drawing a bead on him.

Harrigan fought off a sudden desire to dive for cover. He edged back slightly, glancing left and right as he did so. On the street below him, a scattering of locals were bustling along, eager to be away before night truly fell. This part of Arkham, he guessed, was not a place where the more genteel elements of the town would spend any time unless they really had to.

It was beginning to rain, dark clouds sweeping low over the sky, the sidewalks already gleaming. Harrigan saw umbrellas going up, popping like mushrooms. A couple of cars grumbled past, slow and heavy, their lights a golden shimmer on the road, and he heard the spit and hiss of raindrops against the hot glass of streetlamps.

High above him, between the roofs and the clouds, a bird fluttered its miserable, sodden wings.

There was no danger that he could see; no one loitering, or watching him sideways, or peering from behind the frame of an open window. Harrigan had been hunted in the past, and knew what to look for. No, he was probably just being paranoid. Diana’s disappearance, and the infuriating reactions it had aroused in Carolyn Fern, had unsettled him.

The longer he waited at the boarding house door, though, the more attention he would attract.

He shook himself, then trotted down the steps and into the stream of people, walking as fast as his aching leg would allow. He lowered his gaze, head down against the rain, and kept his left arm tight into his side so as to keep the Winchester from swinging under his coat.

He could even have afforded to be less careful. No one paid him any attention. There was a kind of subdued panic in the way these people moved, weaving quickly around him through the rain, silent and careful, each intent on his own destination. He might as well have been invisible.

That suited Mark Harrigan just fine. Invisibility was a state he aspired to.

He crossed the street, and headed toward the river.

* * *

There was a chance, he supposed, that Carolyn was right. Diana’s disappearance could have resulted from something as mundane as kidnapping. For someone who knew what they were doing, it would have been easy enough to remove the woman from her restraints and take her away to be quietly silenced, or perhaps the other way around. Diana would not have put up a fight in either case.

People who read too much Black Mask might expect a pillow over the face to be the weapon of choice when disposing of someone in the hospital, but Harrigan knew better. A wire around the neck or a bullet to the skull was more likely, and either would be a mercy.

Honestly, though, he didn’t think Diana had been that lucky. The circumstances were not quite the same as Sophie’s, but close enough.

It was hardly a surprise that no one had heard anything. Diana was catatonic. She wouldn’t have been able to scream as she was eaten alive from within. She had died silent and alone, strapped to a bed frame in a mental asylum, and no one had even witnessed her passing.

Cold fury, bitter as vomit, surged into Harrigan’s throat at the thought of it.

If he was right, and Diana had fallen victim to the same unspeakable fate as Sophie, then it meant the creatures he had fought had been involved in his wife’s death. Somehow they had tracked her down, driven her slowly mad and finally, when she could take no more of the pain and the visions, fed her to whatever unseen predator had eaten her alive from within.

And now there were more of them, here in Arkham, attempting to keep their existence a secret with the same vile tricks.

It wouldn’t be enough, Harrigan would make sure of that. For Sophie, and Farrow, and now Diana Stanley, he would drag them one by one into the light and end them, no matter what it cost him.

* * *

Within a few minutes he had reached a place where there were no streetlamps, just harsh industrial safety lights set so high their glow barely reached the sidewalk. Walls loomed on either side of him, warehouses or tenements. It was quieter here, now he was off the main drag and into the back ways. All the sensible people were keeping to the bright main streets.

There was, however, at least one person close by.

Harrigan was being followed. The hunted feeling had solidified into footsteps.

He ducked around a corner and stopped, pressing himself against damp stone, listening as the footfalls drew closer, light and quick. Whoever was tailing him was no expert.

He had heard the footsteps minutes ago, and had taken a few simple precautions to make sure he was right about being followed.

When he had paused, so had the hidden man. When he had gone on an obvious detour and retraced his steps around the last residential block, the footfalls had stayed within earshot. Whoever was on his tail was dogged, but inexperienced.

Harrigan almost grinned. He had been worried that he had left the boarding house too soon, that rage and the need to be away from Carolyn’s shrill questioning had driven him out into the night without a workable strategy. He had wondered whether he would find anyone involved in the affair at all.

He was a soldier, not a detective.

But now here was someone who didn’t have his best interests at heart, who preferred to follow and watch from the shadows rather than confront him. And he was walking right into Harrigan’s waiting arms.

He reached under his coat and freed the shotgun, snapping it down off the breakaway clip, his finger reflexively finding the trigger. He didn’t pump the slide, not yet. When the man following him was looking down the Winchester’s barrel, then Harrigan would chamber a shell.

He drew in a deep breath, let it halfway out, waited.

Something slapped heavily onto the sidewalk behind him.

Harrigan spun around, bringing the Winchester up fast and smooth, but whatever had landed there was already surging at him. He caught a glimpse of something dark and slick, of leather and bone and vast rolling eyes, and then it slammed into him and he was whirling through the air. The road flew up into his face, sending the shotgun skittering away into the rain.

He rolled over, tried to get onto one knee, but the thing was on him again, blindingly fast. He felt it grab his arm, its grip cold and unyielding as iron, and then it wrenched him back up, onto his feet, swinging him violently around. He clamped his jaw tight over a cry of pain.

A mouth that was half beak and half suppurating wound hinged apart, sickeningly wide, lurching in all its drool-slimed horror toward his face.

Harrigan tried to twist away. The thing was peering at him, its nightmare skull still unfolded, its dead eyes swiveling as it pulled him left and right. Finally it tipped its head back and let out a deafening, hissing shriek.

The stench of its breath almost made Harrigan puke. He reached back, under his coat, trying to get to the Colt. His fingers brushed cold metal, and then his coat was flapping wildly around him, tangling his arm. A tornado of rain-lashed wind was swiping down at him from the sky.

He looked up, squinting past the taloned limbs that gripped him, and saw a vast black shape flapping between the warehouse walls, tattered bat wings of scaly feather and gleaming exposed bone. Another of the creatures was up there, hovering. As he gaped, it too opened its horrible head, and emitted a series of shrieking barks.

The first answered in a liquid howl.

They’re talking, Harrigan thought wildly.

The one that had him unfurled its own wings, shadowing half the street.

Harrigan’s eyes widened. “Don’t you dare,” he growled. “Don’t you bloody—”

The wings hammered downward. A reeking hurricane slammed into Harrigan, blinding him, and then the ground was ripped from beneath his feet. He flailed his free arm, trying to get a grip on something, anything, even the pulsing limb of the creature that was wrenching him upward, but the wind was too strong, the sudden darkness too absolute. He gripped nothing but freezing, lashing air.

The street spun away beneath him.

Before Harrigan could draw a breath to scream he was a hundred feet up, the rain battering his skin like buckshot as the creature hurtled over the town. He saw the river swinging below him, a curving strip of black mirror dotted with lights, shrinking as he stared, and then occluded by the loathsome shape of the second winged beast as it banked and flapped in his wake. There was a distant scream of tires down there, a faint cone of light swerving violently and then vanishing. Someone must have looked up from within his car, and gone off the road in shock.

The air was getting misty, the rain attenuating. He was still racing upward with sickening speed, the clouds looming to meet him. He had stopped trying to get to his gun. Even if he managed to reach the Colt, shooting the creature now would be death. If it released him he would be splashed across Arkham like rotten fruit.

The larger buildings below had already given way to clustered houses, smaller and dimmer than in the center of town.

And then the streets were gone. He was racing over open fields.

A series of shrieks ripped out into the night, answered by more from behind and below. Harrigan started to wonder if the cries were actual communication, or merely the animal howls of mindless horrors, but before he’d had time to form the thought the ground surged up at him. There was a sickening swoop in his gut as he was pulled downward.

The creature had pulled its wings in, and launched itself at the Earth.

It curved around in a great arc. Harrigan saw the distant lights of Arkham swing past him, bobbing into view and then away, a momentary glimpse of the normal and the safe before he was flung back into the night. A brief sight of land between high and freezing waves, the last thing seen before drowning.

The creature let out an awful bark, and then threw its wings wide. Harrigan was flung forward. The monster had shed almost all its speed in a matter of seconds.

And then it dropped him.

Harrigan yelled, twisted, limbs whirling, hands clawing at cold air. Black sharpness, keen as razors, scoured him for a terrifying second before a brutal impact sledged into his face and chest. He tumbled messily to a halt and lay shaking, the breath punched clean out of his lungs, every bone ringing with shock.

There was a rush of air and dead, sodden leaves as the creatures came down close by.

Harrigan rolled over onto his back, trying to suck a breath in. He opened his eyes and saw tree limbs above him, bare and clawed against the dark, roiling sky, the scudding edge of the rainstorm. He’d been dropped into woodland. There was forest a couple of miles to the north of Arkham. He hadn’t been in the air for all that long; the creatures must have set him down there.

He rolled his head left and right, half expecting to see a nest filled with huge, demonic fledglings, eager to strip the flesh from his bones.

All he saw were men running toward him.

* * *

Past the rushing in his ears he could hear their voices getting rapidly closer. He forced himself up onto his knees, shaking his head to clear it. For a second he considered shouting for help, but knew instinctively that he had no friends here.

The first of them reached him, skidding to a halt among the leaf-litter. He saw a white, pinched face between newsboy cap and pea coat, the ugly snout of a shotgun. “He’s here! He’s over here!”

More arrived, fanning quickly out around him. There were ten of them, maybe a dozen. Some carried flashlights and pistols, while at least three clutched shotguns. A couple were only armed with pickaxe handles, but looked very much as if they knew how to use them. Harrigan noticed that they had formed up around him in such a way that, should they start shooting, they would not be hit by their own crossfire.

Thugs they might be, but someone had drilled them properly.

The two creatures shrieked and hissed as the men approached, backing carefully away, lowering their heads almost to ground level. Their bodies, what he could see of them, were repulsively flexible. Then one of them twisted itself upright, unhinged its awful jaw, and gave forth a series of deafening, coughing barks.

He noticed that the armed men seemed unsurprised by the two beasts, although they were plainly as disgusted by them as he was.

The creatures had spread their wings, smoky tatters of night-black tissue stretched across great spars of slimy, exposed bone. Harrigan could see little of their actual shapes in the darkness, and he had no real desire to. There was something about them that was not simply grotesque on a visceral level; their very existence made his brain rebel. Watching them move was like seeing a triangle with too many sides, a hole turned inside out. They made him want to look away, to close his eyes and forget he had ever seen them.

There was a short chorus of hissing yelps, and then those rotting wings slammed downward, blasting up a cloud of soil and leaves. When the litter had fallen, the creatures were already whirling away into the sky.

“You boys used to keep dogs, back in my day,” Harrigan muttered, struggling to his feet. “Things have really gone to hell.”

“More than you know.”

The man who had spoken stepped forward. He was small and slender, hatless, black hair slicked back over a narrow, almost delicate-looking skull. He wasn’t carrying a gun, just a flashlight that was aimed with unerring accuracy into Harrigan’s eyes. “You’re still packing. Hand it over.”

“I’ve got nothing.”

“Nice try, Harrigan.” The man held out a hand, palm up. “Now.”

“Didn’t realize I was famous.” He reached back under his coat, freed the pistol, and then in one fast, smooth draw whipped it around to center on the other man’s forehead.

The man took it away from him and hit him with it.

It happened so quickly Harrigan didn’t even see it. He should have had the slender man staring down the barrel of the Colt in half a heartbeat, but instead the guy had ducked and twisted and snapped the pistol away. Harrigan didn’t even realize what had happened until the cold butt of it hammered into the side of his skull.

He staggered back, almost falling, clamping a hand to his temple. “Son of a—”

The Colt was pointing at Harrigan’s gut. “Try that again and I’ll put one through your spine,” the small man told him, very calmly, his voice wholly without anger. “Boss said he wanted you talking. Didn’t say nothing about walking.”

Blood was seeping between Harrigan’s fingers. “So who do I have to thank for this little party?”

“Let’s go meet him.”

He gestured with the gun. Harrigan stared at him for a moment or two, weighing up his options, then decided that he didn’t really have any. He turned, the forest tipping woozily around him, and began stumbling away in the direction the man had indicated.

Behind him, the armed men followed. Harrigan could judge where they walked by the sounds they made, how they had split into two groups to keep him continually in sight. Once again, he was at once impressed and infuriated by how well they had been schooled. Even among the trees, there was little chance of escape. If he tried to run, one of the men would simply shoot the legs from under him.

Oddly, he couldn’t hear the slender man at all.

Within a minute or so he saw lights ahead, angular slivers of misty yellow between the tree boles. “Is he there?”

“Keep walking.” The thin man’s voice came from close behind him. “Trust me, you’ll want this over with quickly.”

“You don’t sound too enthusiastic about it.”

“Don’t try to appeal to my better nature, Harrigan. I haven’t got one.”

Harrigan felt a shove between his shoulder blades, and staggered a few steps forward. He grabbed at a branch to steady himself, and stopped, peering forward into the strange, fractured light.

Suddenly, he didn’t want to go any further. “What the hell?”

There was a clearing in front of him, a wide circle devoid of trees. Three automobiles had been parked just outside the space; Harrigan saw a big Lincoln hunched between two smaller cars, an Oakland and something that might have been a Flint. Their headlights were sending cones of dull yellow light carving through the wet air.

Picked out in their beams, surrounded by rough stone columns that were little more than long, jagged boulders tipped up on end, lay something solid and blocky and waist-high. All Harrigan could see of it was a black shape, a silhouette in the greasy yellow light, but the sight of it turned his spine to ice. He gripped the branch hard.

The slender man was still behind him. “Move your ass.”

“What is this?”

“Get in there and find out.” The man shoved him again, hard.

Harrigan felt the impact, let it swing him forward around the branch. He sagged as if about to fall and then launched himself into the clearing, ducking immediately left to put a stone column between him and the armed men. He heard a shot and the scream of lead caroming off rock.

He needed to get between the cars. If he could do that, their lights would be in the eyes of the men chasing him.

A cacophony of shouting had erupted behind him, and he could hear the forest floor kicked up in a dozen places by running feet. He changed direction again, keeping low, trying to head for the Lincoln without being illuminated by its headlights. He knew the armed men were seconds behind him at most. If he faltered, they would be on him.

His left thighbone was hammering pain up into his gut, the side of his skull pounding where the pistol had hit him. He couldn’t run for long.

The cars loomed ahead of him. There was the flat, hard report of a pistol and the Flint went half blind, shattered glass spattering hot onto the ground as the headlight exploded. Harrigan dived toward the shadow it left.

Another shadow, huge and winged, erupted down in front of him.

He tried to stop, but the creature was already on him. It lashed out, the impact of its limb spinning him over backward. Before he hit the ground the second one was shrieking toward him. Its talons clamped agonizingly around his shoulder and whirled him around.

The clearing blurred past him, a spiral of light and darkness before his head struck rock.

The next few minutes were just jumps of consciousness, staccato bursts of random sensation. He felt his body being dragged, rolled, hauled up by something horrifically strong. Dull impacts clattering into his ribs; fists maybe, or axe handles. Cold stone grinding against his back, his shoulders and hips protesting as his limbs were stretched, the back of his head scraping down over damp, icy rock.

Finally, the succession of unconnected moments merged. Harrigan’s senses returned to him piece by agonizing piece.

He was on his back, his arms forced above his head, wrists clamped in a grip as hard and merciless as steel. His legs felt like they were being pulled from his hipbones; his ribcage was alight with thudding spikes of pain. The surface under him was freezing and damp, a slab of rough, weathered stone. Over his head, clouds churned, and he could hear the hissing, stinking breath of the two winged creatures that held him down.

The slender man was standing over him.

He took Harrigan’s chin between his fingers and thumb, twisting his head left and right. “Mr. Avery? He’s back.”

Harrigan tried to pull his head away, but his body wasn’t obeying him. All he could do was lie there, a catalog of discomfort, and let the man appraise his skull like a trophy hunter.

There was little satisfaction in having his suspicions about Phillip Avery confirmed.

He heard footfalls, heavy and uneven, the soft crunch of a walking cane on the clearing’s littered ground. A moment later another figure appeared. Avery, he guessed.

His vision was still blurry, the world unsteady around him. In the yellow light the second man seemed warped, twisted, almost haloed. Harrigan blinked a few times, trying to get the blood out of his eyes to see his captor more clearly.

Slowly, the man’s face came into focus.

His initial impression hadn’t been entirely down to the beating. The face was indeed twisted, the mouth and one eye pulled askew, giving the man a sort of perpetual sneer. He wore spectacles with round lenses of tinted glass, and a thin mustache covered his upper lip. A pale grey fedora was pulled down over short, oiled hair.

Seeing him, Harrigan felt a queasy jolt of recognition. His sight was still blurred, and the man’s attire and stance was entirely alien to him. But there was something about the face, the bones behind it, that struck a note of unease in the dark places of his mind.

Harrigan seldom forgot a face, even the ones he had put bullets through.

He brushed the feeling away. There were more pressing matters at hand. The creatures holding him down were watching him with a vile intensity, their grip unyielding on his wrists and ankles, but most of the armed men had already wandered further away. Only Avery and the slender man remained. The others didn’t want to be anywhere near him, or the things that held him.

Harrigan’s nerves were slowly coming back under his control, but other than that he was still helpless. He waited, keeping as still as he could. If any opportunity to strike back presented itself, he would need to be ready.

“Tough bastard,” said the slender man.

“He always was.” The man above him did something with his facial muscles that, on anyone else, would have been a smile. “You’ve got a thick skull, Harrigan. I thought that knock on the head was the end of you.”

The sound of his voice brought the feeling of recognition surging up again. Harrigan squeezed his eyes shut, hoping one last time that when he opened them again a stranger would be standing over him, but all he achieved was to clear his sight a little more.

He knew Phillip Avery, or the man who now used the name.

“Damn,” he gaped. “Orton.”

“He remembers me, Nightingale.” The man straightened. “Must have the memory of a bloody elephant.”

“You oughta be on the stage, Harrigan,” said the man called Nightingale.

No, Harrigan thought. No way. It’s impossible.

His mind was spinning. Orton was a dead man, a broken corpse rotting in a Mexican cave. Harrigan had seen the ruin wrought on his body by the explosion, had seen the last scrabblings of his hand as his blood and life had spilled out onto the dusty ground. It had been ten years ago, and he could still hear the sergeant’s last, scraping breaths.

He could not be standing here, even twisted by injury as Avery clearly was. He could not have lived.

And yet there was no mistaking the face, the voice, the moneyed accent. Orton had not only survived the cave, he had acquired a new name, a successful business, and some deeply unpleasant associates.

“What the hell’s going on, Orton?” The sound of the name sounded unnatural on his lips. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I’ve been here for a long while.” The man began walking around the slab. Harrigan could see that he was limping. He’d been right about the cane. “Although, strictly speaking, Jonathan Orton is dead. I left him in that cave, just like you and Farrow did.”

“Left you?” Harrigan tried to raise his head, but the creature was dragging his arms too far back. “You’d been blown apart! What was I supposed to do, carry you out a piece at a time?”

Orton had limped the rest of the way around the slab, and now stood close to Harrigan’s head. The light from the headlights at his back turned him into a shadow, a misshapen cutout. “If you had done that,” he said quietly, almost wistfully, “things would have been very different.”

“Yeah. You’d have been dead.”

“And you’d not be lying there. Funny how the world turns.”

Harrigan glared. “So that’s what this is all about? Revenge on me and Farrow for not getting you out of there?”

“Revenge?” Orton stared down at him for several seconds, a look of blank incomprehension on his face. Then he threw back his head and barked out a sputtering laugh.

“Good God, Harrigan! Honestly, I always knew you were a self-centered bastard, but this takes solipsism to new heights.” He put his hand to his mouth and coughed wetly. “Son, I didn’t even know you were still alive until you stepped off that train this morning. Oh, I had people watching the stations in case, ever since Farrow turned up: you two always were quite the pair. But for the sake of my associate, not for me.”

“Fine.” Harrigan tugged experimentally at the creature holding him, but its grip remained ferocious. He was starting to lose all feeling in his hands. “If you’re not interested, tell these damn vultures to let me go.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Stone wouldn’t be very happy about that.” Orton raised his head slightly. There was a note in his voice now that Harrigan didn’t like at all. It was something akin to fear. “He’s been very keen to meet you. And trust me, it’s not a good idea to disappoint him.”

“Mr. Stone, huh? That’s its name?”

Orton didn’t look down. “Oh, I’m sure his kind don’t even have names. There was simply a time when I made it clear I needed something to call him, and he picked up the nearest object to hand. It could have been anything. Knife, or eyeball. Lung.”

Something whirred across the sky above the clearing.

Harrigan heard it, a clattering buzz like the wings of some vast insect, but saw nothing but a fleeting shadow. Instinctively he began to struggle, hauling on his numb feet, his leaden hands, twisting against the slab’s cold surface.

“His people made this place,” Orton breathed, still gazing at the scudding clouds. “Back before the settlers, before the Pennacook or the tribes that were here before them. They raised these stones to worship the thousand masks and the dark goat. They set the slab to focus blood magic at Fomalhaut and speak to what lies beneath Hali.”

“Orton! Avery! —Whoever the hell you are. Get these damn things off me!”

“I’m sorry, Harrigan. I really am.” Orton was shaking his head, stepping back from the slab. “But they obey him, not me.”

An eyeless, skittering mass crashed down onto the slab.

Harrigan let out a cry of disgust, wrenching his body away from the thing, his renewed efforts enough to make even the creature at his wrists shift its grip, but it was already looming over him, straddling his chest, its clicking limbs gouging the stone. Its head, blind and seething, dipped toward his face.

Even while the one in Mexico had been trying to kill him, he had never been so close. Its squirming tendrils were brushing his skin. He could feel the coldness of its body, smell the dry rubbery reek of it. Its wings were still folding closed, fanning shut in complex, alien geometries.

And then, just as suddenly as it had arrived, it was away, scampering off the side of the slab, rearing on its hindmost limbs. Colors chased each other across that wormy head, oily rainbows in the dark.

“The element remains within.”

Its voice was horrible, a wheezing drone forced into buzzing human syllables. The last time Harrigan had heard a voice like that, it had been screams issuing from a slit throat.

Orton took a pace closer to the creature. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Mr. Harrigan,” said Orton, turning back to Harrigan. “It seems that you took something out of Mexico that didn’t belong to you.”

“You’re insane. I didn’t take a damn thing.” Harrigan stared at him incredulously. “How could you do this? How could you bring one of them here?”

“You say that as if I had a choice.” Orton took his spectacles off. Without them his eyes looked wrong, uneven. “You can’t imagine what happened back then, Harrigan. They don’t die like we do. When they’re damaged, they rebuild themselves with whatever they have to hand.”

He moved closer. “Everything’s material to them. Parts to be used. Mr. Stone built himself from the best pieces of the two you blew up, plus some extra that was lying around.”

The way he said it sent a fresh chill through Harrigan. “What do you mean…‘extra’?”

“A little of Walinski, a little of me. That voice used to belong to Private Lisetti. And I got some of Mr. Stone in return. I’m sorry you missed it, Harrigan. It really was quite the party.”

Harrigan closed his eyes. “God.”

“Yes, I used to pray too, during the weeks it took for Mr. Stone to put me back together again. He wasn’t careful, you see. He wasn’t tidy. They don’t feel pain, it’s an alien concept to them.” He leaned very close down to Harrigan, his voice dropping to a whisper. “He asked what it meant once, those sounds I’d been making for days on end. It’s really quite difficult to explain a scream, especially when you can’t stop screaming.”

“I didn’t take anything. Orton, tell it.”

“You can’t reason with him, Harrigan. His kind don’t have reasons. They have purposes. Mr. Stone’s purpose has to do with a certain artifact, a piece of black crystal. You might even remember it from the cave.” He smiled. “It was shattered in the explosion, you see. But thank you so much, it looks like you just brought us the missing pieces.”

Harrigan opened his eyes in time to see Mr. Stone raising a glittering mass of blades high above him. He had just enough time to remember what Carolyn had told him about Farrow’s night terrors, the multi-bladed knife he had seen in his dreams, and how his injuries had been listed on the coroner’s report. And then the monster brought its terrible weapon down and hammered the whole shining mass of pins and razors deep into his flesh.

Chapter Nine: Razor Blade Smile

Harrigan screamed helplessly. The weapon was bone-deep in his left thigh.

The pain was unspeakable. He could feel the blades turning within him, working their way deeper, rooting through muscle and tendon and grinding into the wounded bone beneath. He twisted and jolted under it, every nerve spasming in agony, but the device was unceasing. Its icy probes felt like they were clawing his leg apart from the inside out.

Dimly, past his own howls, he could hear Nightingale’s voice. “Jeez, boss. Couldn’t we get him some chloroform or something?”

“Not like you to be squeamish, Sam.”

“Nah, it’s the noise. They’ll hear him bawling for miles.”

“Not my choice, I’m afraid. You know who calls the shots in matters like these.” Orton sighed. He seemed genuinely disturbed by the process. “It’ll be over soon, thank goodness.”

Harrigan clamped his teeth shut over another cry. The eyeless thing was still driving its weapon down into his leg, every twist of the handle sending white-hot shards of pain through his entire body. His vision had contracted to a dark, ruddy blur, his lungs were raw, his heart shuddering and misfiring in his chest.

He couldn’t draw a breath. The world was shrinking away from him, becoming smoke and distant shadow. In a few moments he would die. His heart would give way under the strain, leap free of its moorings, and that would be the end of him.

He was just beginning to like the idea when the torment ended.

Without warning the blades had begun to retract, snapping up out of his flesh. The creature gave its device a final twist and then wrenched it free.

Blood soaked up in its wake.

Harrigan sagged, gasping and choking, flopping on the slab like a landed fish. He felt as though he were on fire. He had been injured before, had endured everything from beatings to bullets, but nothing had felt like what Mr. Stone had put him through.

And yet he knew, horribly, that the act had been committed entirely without malice. The clawed nightmare scuttling back from him had no concept of pain. It had worked on him as a garage mechanic might work on an automobile. No matter how ferocious the discomfort, Harrigan knew he hadn’t been tortured. He had been harvested.

“Thank God that’s finished,” muttered Orton. “Mr. Stone?”

“Hold on.” That was Nightingale. Harrigan saw the man step close and stoop over him. A cool hand clamped hard over his mouth and nose, stifling his gasps.

He struggled weakly. They were done with him, and now they were going to kill him. Harrigan had seen it before, the air passages of a helpless man closed off with a single, well-placed grip. It took less effort than strangulation, as long as the victim had no chance of forcing the hand away.

It was not a pretty death. Harrigan could think of few that were, but he knew that he would rather take a bullet than have the breath stolen from his lungs.

Nightingale wasn’t even looking at him. The man’s narrow skull was tilted up, his strange, pale eyes half closed. He was listening.

“Boss?” His voice was fading, vanishing behind the rushing in Harrigan’s ears. “Car’s coming.”

Orton nodded, then said something, but he was too far away, and Harrigan couldn’t hear it at all.

“Sure.” Nightingale pulled his hand away, ignoring the great sucking breath Harrigan dragged in as he retreated. “Perino, Mulcaire. Get out there. Don’t make it messy unless you have to.”

Harrigan rolled his head to the side, and through a haze of pain saw two men striding out into the woods. One was slipping a pistol into the pocket of his long black coat as he walked.

Orton was speaking to the creature, his words still lost behind the thunder of Harrigan’s tortured heart. In response, Mr. Stone held up the bladed handle. Parts of it had started glowing with a sickly green light.

The creature’s head flickered and flashed. Dimly, Harrigan heard it buzzing out words. Orton replied. His voice was getting clearer, the ocean roar between Harrigan’s ears dulling.

One of the words he said might have been Farrow.

Mr. Stone scuttled several paces toward Orton, jolting forward and then stopping dead, like a running bug. Its head signaled speech again. Harrigan concentrated, willing the pulse to recede, caught several more words. Shard. Complete. Great project.

“And my transition?” asked Orton.

“The Feeders from Within go forth among the masses. Then it experiences transition.”

Nightingale moved toward the pair of them, gesturing at Harrigan with a nod. “What about him?”

“Hm.” Orton sounded thoughtful. “I’m not sure.”

Their voices were low, but Harrigan had good hearing.

“Well, whatever we do, let’s do it fast. McCarran’s coming in before sun-up.”

“Blast, I’d almost forgotten about that. Do you want to deal with it?”

“Not much.”

“The—” And then Mr. Stone rasped something that sounded like buy-a-key. “—carry it away.”

“How far?” Nightingale sounded unimpressed. “Dump him at sea, sure, but you’d be surprised how much shit gets washed back upriver. Remember he’s got some broad back in town.”

Orton rubbed his chin. “That’s a point. Any news on who she is?”

“No, but I’ve got a couple of the boys on her tail. She starts asking around, she’s gone.”

“I don’t suppose it matters. Believe me, Sam; when these fellows go away, they go very far indeed. Mr. Stone, would you tell—” He stopped mid-sentence, his attention drawn by something on the other side of the clearing.

Harrigan turned his head to follow Orton’s gaze. One of Nightingale’s men, the one in the long black coat, was walking quickly toward him. His hat was pulled down low, his collar up. He was holding a shotgun, something short, dangling it low in his right hand.

“Mulcaire?” Nightingale turned toward the new arrival. “Where’s Perino? Did you—”

The figure flipped the shotgun up, pushed its barrel into the gaping maw of the creature holding Harrigan’s wrists, and pulled the trigger.

There was a thumping roar from the gun, and half the thing’s head erupted into a spattering cloud of fluid and spinning bone. The creature gave a deafening shriek and hurled itself back from the slab, scrabbling at the wound.

Harrigan’s hands were free. He doubled up, clutching his opened leg.

Behind him the winged monster was whirling around, emitting a continuous, ululating scream. Nightingale had his pistol up, trying to draw a bead on the man in the coat, but a moment later he ducked aside as a second blast from the shotgun hammered out. Harrigan saw one of Orton’s men spin and fall, his chest blossoming crimson. Orton himself was on the ground, hands over his head, more of his thugs scattering past him.

There was a slick, skittering whirr as Mr. Stone raced up the trunk of a nearby tree.

Harrigan heard the hellish racket of the shotgun going off a third time, painfully close. The blast ripped into the wing of the creature at his ankles, driving it back off him, and suddenly he was free. He shoved himself sideways, rolling off the stone and thumping heavily onto the wet ground.

The coated man was off, running into the trees.

Two goons were leaping toward the slab, one with an axe handle raised, the other aiming a pistol. Harrigan hurled himself at them, ignoring the fire in his feet and hands. He hit the nearest man as hard as he could, his fist rocking the thug’s head back and spinning him over. Before the guy even stopped running Harrigan had ripped the wood from his hands and whipped it brutally sideways at head-level.

His swing wasn’t as powerful as it should have been, mainly because he couldn’t really feel his hands, but it still took the second man’s jaw halfway off. Harrigan heard him bubble out a scream as he tumbled past. He followed the man down, grabbing the pistol as it fell, and then shoved his skull as hard he could into the slab.

There was an ugly impact. Harrigan pushed the man away from him. The top of his head had caved in.

He straightened, bringing the gun up. It was a revolver, something big, a .38 at least. Harrigan swung it about, hoping to find Nightingale or Orton in his sights, but the wounded monster was in the way, thrashing mindlessly between him and the cars, its opened, emptied head gushing.

Some of Orton’s men had scattered, and others were aiming their guns at him, but the buy-a-key’s convulsions were blocking their aim. Harrigan stood his ground for a moment, hunting for a clear line of fire back to Orton, but then the creature began to sag, and he realized that he wasn’t going to get a better chance to escape than right now.

He spat a curse, turned on his heels, and ran.

* * *

Harrigan actually made it out of the clearing before he heard any shots fired. He had expected to fall flat on his face within yards of the slab, his wounded leg folding under him, but it seemed as though Mr. Stone’s blades had been more precise than they’d felt. Certainly the entire front of his thigh was alight with pain, but it just felt like he had been knifed a few times, not as though his thighbone had been drilled apart.

He had been stabbed before. It was a pain he could deal with, at least for now.

But he was bleeding, his ribs bruised if not broken, his skull still ringing from when his head had crashed against the slab. He couldn’t go on for long. It was likely that Orton’s men would catch him before he could get far, and there were only five bullets in the revolver. Nightingale’s training. The thug hadn’t been dumb enough to leave one under the hammer.

He slowed, panting, and found a tree to lean against.

There were shouts behind him, and the sounds of running. The winged creature had finally stopped screaming, which was a relief, although there was no sign of the other one. Or of Mr. Stone, which was more worrying. From what he had seen, the bigger monsters could be taken down by the right kind of weapon, just like any regular animal. The faceless, scuttling thing that Orton had accompanied back from Mexico had survived gunshots, explosions, and fire, and had just reassembled itself with parts of whatever, or whoever lay to hand.

Next time, Harrigan thought sourly, I’ll try drowning the bastard.

He squinted into the night. There was a faint glow ahead of him, silhouetting the trees.

For a moment he wondered if he was looking at Orton’s cars, if he had somehow gotten himself turned around in the dark, but a glance back showed that the danger was still very much behind him.

Another vehicle, then. Harrigan started forward, lurching toward the light. Perhaps he could steal the thing, drive it to safety before his adrenaline ran dry.

Within a few yards he saw it, a Ford T pickup parked awkwardly on a narrow track that wound between the trees. No match for Orton’s vehicles in terms of speed, but there were several hundred yards of woodland between them and this machine. He could at least lose the men on foot.

He ran on a few paces, and then tripped headlong.

The ground surged up at him. He twisted and rolled as he fell, just managing to hold onto the gun, crashing messily through fallen branches and dead leaves before finally fetching up on his backside. He brought the gun up, fast, aiming it at the man he had tripped over, clamping both hands over the grip to stop the weapon shaking so much.

The man on the ground was no threat, Harrigan saw quickly. He was sprawled on his back, staring wide-eyed at the treetops, the front of his shirt glossy with blood. His throat gaped like a second mouth.

He wasn’t wearing a coat.

Harrigan got up, looking warily around him. The noises at his back were closing in, maybe a minute or two away. If Nightingale was pursuing him, the small man could be even closer, and Harrigan would probably never hear him. He needed to move, and move fast, if he was to stand a chance of surviving the night.

But even so, he hesitated. Tripping over unexplained corpses tended to make Mark Harrigan nervous.

He looked back toward the pickup, and saw that a figure had appeared next to it. It was his savior from the clearing: the hat was gone, but the way he had the coat’s collar tugged up around his face was unmistakable.

The figure beckoned hurriedly, then climbed into the pickup. Harrigan heard the engine whine into rattling life.

He looked down at the corpse. Orton’s man, sent out with a colleague to investigate an approaching car. He’d lost his life and his coat to whoever was in the Ford. The other man was probably lying around somewhere too, in a similar condition.

Which made whoever was waiting for Harrigan in the pickup very dangerous indeed.

He trotted forward carefully, keeping low, then wrenched the driver’s side door open and leveled his pistol, not close enough for the man to grab but close enough to make a real mess if he pulled the trigger. “Out of the car, pal. Nice and…uh, slow…”

His voice trailed off. A young woman sat with her hands on the wheel, smiling at him, wearing a dead man’s coat.

Her skin was very pale, and her dark auburn hair, while untidy and tangled, was cut in a fashionable flapper bob. She had a long piece of surgical dressing on her forehead and a smile on her lips that sent a cold shudder right down Harrigan’s spine.

“Hello, dear,” said Diana Stanley. “Having a busy night?”

* * *

In the space of one short evening, Mark Harrigan had been attacked and hauled hundreds of feet into the air by flying monsters. He had been beaten up and held down to an ancient sacrificial slab while one of the eyeless nightmares from Mexico stabbed him in the leg. He had spoken to a man he had thought dead and rotting for ten years, been thrown around and shot at and half suffocated.

But after all those trials, it was seeing Diana Stanley sitting there in the driver’s seat of a Ford pickup that robbed him of speech.

“Buh,” was all he could manage to say.

Diana raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Harrigan, you are being chased, you know. Perhaps you’d like to get in?”

Before he could answer there was a flash in the night, a dull popping as a splintered hole appeared in the door, just above the handle. Harrigan snatched his hand back. “Jesus!”

Diana giggled. “Whoops.”

There was no time to run around the vehicle. “Scoot over.”

“You’re in no fit state to—”

“Move!” He stuffed the pistol into his pocket and clambered into the pickup, vaguely aware that Diana was scrambling convulsively away from him. Something rolled under his foot as he scrambled in, jarring his punctured leg painfully, but he kicked it away and tugged the door shut behind him.

He tried not to think about the men running at him as he worked the handbrake lever and pushed the clutch down.

The pickup was old. It was slow. It had very little in the way of suspension, its hard springs transmitting every rut and rock in the track straight up into Harrigan’s spine. As it surged forward it tilted wildly on its thin spoked wheels, almost tipping into a tree. Even so, it left the men chasing him standing helplessly as he powered it forward, and Harrigan loved it a little for that.

He looked back, and saw more flashes. Bullets whined past him, one splintering the planks of the pickup’s rear board. He ducked lower in his seat and gave the Ford as much gas as he dared.

The clamor of the engine rose. Trees started to race by on either side, twisted trunks looming out of the night as the headlights lit them. “Which way? Am I going the right way?”

“Yes,” Diana answered, quite calmly. “Just follow the track. It’ll take us out of the woods in a mile or so.”

“Great.” Harrigan was hunched over the wheel, staring out over the Ford’s hood and trying to control his breathing. The headlights weren’t bright and the track curved treacherously through the trees. If he lost concentration for a moment, he could end up killing them both.

Whenever he turned the wheel, the rolling thing hit him in the foot. Despite himself, he looked down, just long enough to see a couple of full bottles sliding around on the floor. “What the hell? Where did you get this thing?”

“I borrowed it.”

“Who from, the local bootlegger?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He was busy taking boxes out of the back when I took it, so I didn’t have time to ask him.”

Wonderful, thought Harrigan, his hands painfully tight on the wheel. Now whoever ran Arkham’s speakeasies would be after their blood, too.

Diana’s voice sounded strange, unconcerned, as if she was on a leisurely drive to the beach, not speeding almost blind through rain-slick woodland. Harrigan had to admit that he was oddly glad to see the woman alive, but even in the scant minutes they had spent together he could tell that there was something very wrong with her.

He had an ugly feeling that what she had done in the clearing, and to Orton’s men in the woods, had a lot to do with that.

The trees were thinning out. Harrigan risked a glance at her. “So where did you learn to handle a gun like that?”

Diana made an odd, amused little noise in the back of her throat. “Hm. Daddy taught me. He was a farmer.”

“Didn’t figure you for a farm girl.”

“I hide it well, don’t I?” She smiled, and primped her tangled hair. Harrigan could see that her hand was shaking.

“Diana…”

“Mm?”

“Look, last time I saw you, you were… Well…”

“Not exactly myself?” The smile went from her voice. “Yes. And I can only apologize for being less than polite when we last met, Mr. Harrigan. I was aware of you, heard every word. I simply couldn’t do a thing about it.”

What was the word Carolyn had used? “Catatonic.”

“Oh, is that what they call it these days?” He could hear she was grinning again. He was rather glad he couldn’t see it. “I’d prefer ‘mad as a hatter’ myself.”

“So whatever Dr. West did to you didn’t stick.”

“That darling boy? I’m quite sure he cured me. The turn’s just up here; you’ll need to take a right.”

The last of the trees fell behind him. Harrigan turned the wheel and felt the road beneath the pickup’s wheels smooth out. He let out a long breath. “So what happened? How did you get out of the asylum?”

“Mr. Harrigan, I’m sure you’re just brim full of questions. But I really think they’ll have to wait.”

She was looking back over her shoulder. Harrigan followed suit, and saw three points of light speeding up behind the Ford. Two cars, one with a headlight out. “Orton.”

“Who?”

“Guy with the cane.”

“Oh, you mean Mr. Avery. Awful man.”

“He was called Orton when I knew him.” There was no sign of the Lincoln, but from what Harrigan could see in his mirror, both the Oakland and the Flint were carrying four or five men apiece, and even with all that extra weight they were gaining on the Ford. “And yeah, he’s a louse. How far back into town?”

“Three or four miles.” Diana was pulling the shotgun up from beside her seat. Close up, Harrigan recognized it instantly.

“Hey, that’s my trench gun!”

“You dropped it when those horrible bird-things caught you.”

So those were Diana’s footsteps he had heard following him. She must have seen him carried off, picked up his gun, and stolen the Ford to follow him. How she’d managed it without running the pickup off the road or losing him entirely he had no idea, but maybe being crazy had something to do with it. “‘Buy-a-key,’ Orton called them.”

“Oh, so that’s a byakhee!” Diana chuckled happily. “Mr. Avery used to prattle on about them back at the Lodge. I always wondered what they looked like.”

Harrigan wished he didn’t know. “You’ve only got two shells left in that thing.”

“Really?” She sounded like a little girl that had been told there were only two more candies in the box. “I shall have to be ever so careful then, won’t I.”

Harrigan didn’t answer, just put his foot down as far as it would go. The pickup’s engine was growling high and loud under the hood, the bodywork trying to shake itself to pieces, the windshield vibrating constantly as the vehicle sped through the darkness. Harrigan could see a vague blur of woods rushing past on Diana’s side, an emptiness that spoke of fields on the other. And three lights in his mirror, getting bigger and brighter with alarming speed.

The Flint was right behind him now, the smaller Oakland coming up fast on the passenger side. He saw an arm emerge from the Flint, the flash of pistol shots.

The rear window of the pickup detonated, showering him with glass. “Jesus!”

“Language,” said Diana. She was twisting around in her seat, the trench gun pointing back through the shattered window.

The weapon’s breach was a hand’s width from Harrigan’s head. “What the hell are you doing?” he barked, leaning as far away as he could in his seat. “Don’t fire that damn thing in—”

Unimaginable noise filled the pickup.

The shock of it slammed Harrigan’s head into the side window. He felt the Ford slewing out from under him, the engine suddenly silent, the air grey with stinking gun smoke. He hauled the wheel right, then left, struggling to get the pickup under control, the rear wheels fishtailing wildly.

He couldn’t hear anything outside of his own head, just a high, thumping whistle.

Behind him, the Oakland was drifting off its line. A fist-sized hole had been punched through the windshield, and the driver was slumped over, half his face gone. There was a chaos of limbs around him, everyone else in the car trying to grab the wheel at once.

For a few seconds it looked as though they were going to make it. Then the Oakland turned, tilted, its weight and its speed hurling it over onto the road. It hammered down onto its side and went whirling back into the darkness, shedding wheels and limbs.

Harrigan’s hearing was filtering back. He shook his head violently, trying to get the whining out of his ears. “You’re insane, lady!”

“So they tell me.”

Another shot found the pickup, ripping away part of the door. Harrigan jerked away from it, seeing the windshield crack, his mirror spin away. The men in the Flint had gotten his range.

He turned the wheel right and then hard left, twitching the pickup across the road. “Can you get them without busting my eardrums?”

“Shall we find out?” Diana twisted around again.

Something slapped into the back of Harrigan’s seat at the top edge. He felt the impact, the stinging punch of debris spitting up into the back of his head. He jerked forward reflexively and the Ford twisted, jolting left and bouncing on its hard springs.

The trench gun went off, shockingly loud and close.

Harrigan swore, dragging on the wheel. The pickup was sliding diagonally across the road. He could feel the tires juddering across asphalt, then rutted soil and stone and the Ford tilting horribly to the right. He stamped on the brake, yanked the wheel over.

The Flint roared past him, tires screaming.

Diana had missed, her aim thrown when Harrigan had lost control of the Ford. The Flint was howling around in a half-circle, already off the road and onto the field, the driver bringing the vehicle around so he and the men with him could take the pickup to pieces at close range.

The Ford had rolled almost to a stop. Harrigan threw himself out onto the road, scrambled up to one knee, and pulled the pistol out of his pocket. The Flint was bearing down on him, speeding up, its single headlight painfully bright.

Harrigan leveled the gun at the windshield, waited until the car was ten yards away, and then squeezed off four shots quicker than he could count them.

The revolver bucked in his hands, recoil trying to claw it upward, but he held it firmly in both hands. The first shot took the other headlight out, the second caromed off the hood. Harrigan couldn’t see where the other two went, but he heard glass shatter.

He jumped up and flattened himself against the pickup’s flank. The Flint went past him, angled in a dead straight line across the road, its engine note fading toward a stall. The wind of its passing tugged at his coat. The car went on for a hundred yards, slowing all the time, then trundled lazily off the asphalt and into the trees.

Harrigan didn’t wait any longer than that. He might have winged or killed the driver, but the other men inside would be out and at him in seconds. He pulled open the Ford’s door and climbed back in. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” Diana was grinning back at the Flint. “Hm. They’re going to be ever so cross.”

Harrigan looked back, saw men already spilling out of the car. One of them staggered several paces toward him and then collapsed, vomiting onto the asphalt.

“Amateurs.” He tugged on the gearstick. The Ford lurched, engine clashing, then bumped back onto the road.

In the distance, lights glittered, winking and hazy in the wet night air. Harrigan aimed the Ford’s hood at the brightest of them and put his foot down.

* * *

They drove in silence for a couple of miles.

Harrigan was beginning to hurt again. The chase had flooded him with adrenaline, driving away the pain of his injuries, but now that was waning and he was starting to ache everywhere. He shifted in his seat, wincing, wondering if Orton’s thugs had cracked any of his ribs.

He remembered the bottles. “Miss Stanley? Can you get any of that hooch open?”

“While you’re driving?”

Harrigan’s left leg, while it had largely stopped bleeding, was beginning to seize up entirely. Mr. Stone’s blades had done something to his insides, he was certain of it. “It’s so I can keep driving.”

“Hm. Pull over.”

“I’ll be fine, just give me a shot.”

Diana turned toward him. From the corner of his eye he could see her smiling that terrible smile. “Thanks but no thanks, Mr. Harrigan. I’ve only just gotten out of one hospital. I’ve no desire to wind up in another.”

“Okay, Mom,” he growled. Admitting she was right, even to himself, was less than pleasant, but he really was feeling quite bad. He slowed the pickup down, steering it to the side of the road and braking as gently as he could.

They were on the outskirts of town. Arkham’s lights were smeared across the Ford’s cracked windshield. The rain-wet air had cooled, and a chill fog was rising, slowly turning the night pale and indistinct. Harrigan could see the road ahead of him vanishing gradually, the limits of his vision drawing closer.

He opened the door and eased himself out, stepping carefully down onto the road. Apart from the low wheeze of the pickup’s engine there was no sound. A structure loomed a hundred yards ahead of him, a covered bridge over the river, and over to his right an abandoned barn tilted wearily, its roof sagging, half open to the sky.

Untended farmland spread out around him.

Harrigan patted the front of his shirt. His pack of Lucky Strikes was still in the pocket, but a combination of rain and punches had reduced it to a crumpled mess. He took it out, freed a cigarette from the litter of paper and tobacco inside, and straightened it as best he could while Diana scooted across to the driver’s seat.

He had a few matches left, although all of them were broken. He used his coat sleeve to rub a patch of the Ford’s roof dry and struck the longest remnant on it. “We can’t hang around here. Orton’s got people watching Carolyn.”

“Oh, the lovely Dr. Fern. Where is she?”

“Jeez, who knows? I left her at the boarding house. Told her to stay put, but the chances of that are pretty slim.”

“We’re not all little damsels in distress, Mr. Harrigan.” Diana had fished a bottle up from the floor and was twisting the cork out. She tilted it to her lips, took a sip, and screwed her face up. “Oh, that really is horrible.”

He reached out and took it from her, took a long swallow. The whiskey was truly bad, viciously strong and rough. If it had reached the speakeasy it would have been cut half-and-half with water, maybe a little sugar to take the edge off, but drinking it neat was like swallowing paint stripper.

“Had worse,” he rasped.

“We should go and warn her. Oh, and can we stop off at Huntress after that? I’d like to pick up some things.”

Harrigan frowned. He didn’t like the idea of going anywhere that Orton might know about, and it seemed he and Diana had been pally for a while before she had wound up in the asylum. “What kind of things?”

“Clothes, dear. Don’t get too excited, but I’m not wearing a whole lot under this coat.”

“What? Oh, ah…sure.” Harrigan suddenly had no idea what to say. He took another gulp of whiskey, past the cigarette, then pushed the bottle down into the pocket of his coat and started to walk around the pickup. His leg was easing slightly, but he still had to lean on the hood as he went around. “I’ve got some things of my own I’d like to pick up, too.”

“Hm. Let me guess. Not clothes.”

“Not clothes.”

He pulled the passenger side door open, then paused. There was a sound, a soft rushing, hardly audible over the noise of the engine. A faint breeze had risen from nowhere to stir the rising fog. He looked back along the road.

A winged wall of shadow was blurring out of the sky toward him.

Harrigan hurled himself backward, just managing to clear the running board before the byakhee slammed with unbelievable force into the back of the pickup. He came down hard on his injured leg and tumbled, the road sledging into his back as the entire rear section of the vehicle exploded into a cloud of spinning debris.

The impact had flipped the Ford almost onto its nose. Harrigan saw it hanging there, surrounded by flying shreds of its own bodywork, then tilting and groaning and crashing back with sickening force onto its left side. Shattered glass cascaded across the road as the windshield exploded.

Harrigan struggled back onto his feet, spitting out bloody pieces of cigarette. The pickup was an unrecognizable wreck, rocking on its side under the battering down-blasts of the byakhee’s tattered wings. The lights were dead, the engine silent. He couldn’t see Diana at all.

The byakhee brought its wings up, dropping down through the fog. It crunched heavily onto the upturned vehicle’s flank and immediately began ripping at the bodywork, taking the Ford apart with its talons and its great beak-like jaw, digging past wood and metal for the tender flesh cowering within. Harrigan saw a wheel torn off, the axle ripped free, the passenger door flung clear across the road and into the fields beyond.

The sight was ghastly. He knew how strong the bat-like creatures were, from his own painful experience, but the savagery with which it attacked the pickup was appalling. And if Diana was still alive, she was within seconds of being ripped to shreds.

“Hey!” The pistol was still in his pocket. He hauled it out and leveled it, squinting along the barrel at the monster’s skull. “Hey! Over here, you ugly son of a bitch!”

The great head whipped around at him, low on that obscenely sinuous neck. As soon as it was looking right at him, Harrigan fired, his aim straight and true, putting his last bullet straight between the byakhee’s clustered eyes.

There was the snap-whir of a .38 slug ricocheting off solid bone.

Harrigan lowered the pistol, suddenly aware that things were about to go very badly for him. Either this creature had a thicker skull than its fellow, or he needed a bigger gun and a shorter range to do it harm. And right now, all he had was an empty revolver.

The byakhee shook itself, tilted its horrible head slightly, and emitted a long, liquid growl in his direction.

“Oh boy,” Harrigan muttered.

The creature launched itself at him.

He ducked aside, feeling talons part the air inches from his skull. Its tattered wing passed over him and then it was flinging itself around, shrieking with rage, far more agile than anything that size and shape had a right to be. Harrigan tried to get past it, bolting toward the pickup, but it was quicker than him. A spiny forelimb whipped out and slammed him onto the road.

The pistol flew from his fingers.

He landed in gasoline. The pickup’s tank was punctured, vomiting fuel. Harrigan rolled away, hearing talons ripping great gouges from the asphalt where he had fallen, then its head came down, its jawbones hinged wide.

Bright metal punched hard into the monster’s eye.

The byakhee screamed, high and loud as a railroad whistle, and stumbled back. Harrigan saw Diana Stanley tugging some long blade out of the creature’s head. Her white face was streaked with blood, the black coat she wore spread behind her like wings of her own. She followed the byakhee as it tried to twist away from her, stabbing again and again into those rolling eyes.

Her face was split in the most god-awful insane grin Harrigan had ever seen.

He scrambled up, ran at her, barreled into her at waist height. She screamed in anger as they careered backward, falling in a rolling heap onto the road. The knife went skittering into the fog.

Diana tore herself free of him and jumped away. Her smile was gone, her face a mask of horror and fury. “Get away from me!”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Just don’t touch me!” She staggered back a few yards, then the strength seemed to go out of her, and she dropped to her knees.

Harrigan clambered up, turned back to the Ford. The byakhee was going wild, whirling and convulsing, hurling itself at the shattered pickup in a mix of half-blind fury and pain. It was hurting now, but he knew they didn’t have long before it regained its wits. When that happened, it would be down on them like an eagle on a pair of rabbits.

He scanned the ground, trying to find something sharp, a piece of debris big enough to use as a weapon. There was nothing. He patted his pockets, but the gun was gone. His fingers met nothing but a bottle of bad whiskey.

Which might, he realized suddenly, be enough.

He dragged it out. Miraculously, he hadn’t broken it during his various trips to the asphalt, and although a good amount of its contents was now soaking into his coat, it was still more than half full. “Damn.”

Diana was still kneeling on the road, a crumpled heap in her stolen coat. Harrigan ran to her, crouching as he reached into his shirt pocket. He grabbed as many bits of match as he could and handed them to her. “Light these.”

She blinked at him. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

“Not too close to me, okay?” He reached under his collar and dragged his necktie off. “Gasoline.”

One of the matches flared. Harrigan stuffed half his necktie down the bottle’s throat, wrapped the rest around, and then shook the whole thing hard. He held it down to the lit match, watched a sputtering blue flame catch and grow.

There was a howling bark behind him. He whirled, saw the byakhee climbing up over the Ford, its twitching head drooling long trails of thick yellow ichor. It spread its wings, opened its jagged maw, and screamed.

Harrigan hurled the bottle.

He saw it turn in the air, end over end as it arced toward the pickup. The blue flame was gone as soon as it left his hand, and he was already cursing himself as it flew. He hadn’t let it burn long enough. The vapor had lit, but not the necktie. He had wasted his last weapon.

The bottle hit the monster’s forelimb, spun down and crashed apart, spattering liquid fire.

And then the byakhee, a half-seen, twisted tangle of bat-winged shadow perched atop the dark and lifeless Ford was instantly and horribly illuminated. A searing wash of yellow flame billowed up from beneath, gasoline and spilled whiskey leaping in a whorl of blistering fire. In a moment the byakhee was engulfed, ablaze, every part of it outlined in greasy light.

Harrigan saw the fireball rise and crouched, hands over his head, feeling its heat race up on him and over him, followed by a stinking cloud of smoke.

When he looked back, the byakhee was a hundred feet into the air.

It was completely ablaze, its wings dripping tatters of burning flesh as it spiraled up away from the ground. He saw it tilt, emitting deafening squeals and shrieks as it turned toward the woods, but then the last of its control vanished. Too much of it had been lost to the fire.

The monster fell, corkscrewing, tumbling over and over before crashing with bone-splintering force into the sagging roof of the half-fallen barn.

Harrigan turned his head, spat the taste of burning gasoline from his mouth. A half-burned mass of bone and smoking meat was slithering to the hard ground, broken timbers crashing messily down on top of it.

Diana got up, batting embers from her coat. “You know that shouldn’t have worked.”

Her voice was frighteningly calm again. Harrigan raised an eyebrow. “Where’d you get the knife?”

“The asylum kitchens. Really, they should take better care of their utensils, especially with so many mad people in the place. Shall we?”

She turned away from him and began to walk along the road, toward the river.

Harrigan thought about lighting another cigarette, to replace the one he’d bitten through, then decided he didn’t want anything burning that close to his face. Instead he put his hands into his pockets and set off after Diana. The heat of the burning pickup was making him sweat, but it would be a long, cold walk into Arkham.

The byakhee was still making noises as they set off, but it was silent by the time they reached the bridge.

Chapter Ten: Hush

When Carolyn had first arrived at the Orne Library, it had seemed immense. The meager light from its dim, high bulbs had hidden its extents in shadow, and echoes from the distant walls and hard marble floors had leant the place a cold and cavernous air. Carolyn had walked between its bookshelves feeling tiny and alone, a mouse in a cathedral.

Now the hanging bulbs were dark, and there were no voices or footfalls to echo. The only light was inside Armitage’s office, where she had been engrossed in study for at least two hours, and all the students and other librarians had long since left for the night. In the dark and the stillness, the building seemed to have contracted, shrunk down from its previous vastness to a tiny box of light—a bright, paper-strewn vessel lost on a black and windless sea.

The mental image made Carolyn pause in her reading, and shudder.

Across the desk from her, Armitage straightened and put down his pen. “Are you all right, Doctor?”

Carolyn nodded, a little embarrassed. “Sorry. I’ve developed a habit of scaring myself lately.”

“Given the circumstances, I would consider that understandable.”

She smiled. “No, I’m being silly. Have you found what you were looking for?”

“I have indeed.” Armitage lifted the book he had been studying and passed it to her. “I believe this is the paragraph referred to. Although young Wilmarth’s ghastly scrawl makes certainty something of a forlorn hope.”

The book was a leather-bound monograph almost a century old, its pages thin and delicate. Carolyn took it carefully and set it down, holding its covers at an angle to avoid damaging the spine, and began to read the paragraph Armitage had indicated.

After a minute or two she sat back and looked at him across the table. “My God. It’s the same.”

“Yes. Wilmarth has his faults—execrable handwriting being chief among them—but his research is exhaustive.” Armitage sighed. “I believe there can be no doubt. These creatures exist. And have been skulking in the shadows for centuries.”

Carolyn closed the monograph carefully, marking the page with a ribbon. “Maybe longer,” she breathed.

The book was one of several spread out across the desk. Surrounding them were dozens of loose pages, some typed, many covered in tight, almost illegible handwriting. The pages looked, at first glance, to be the work of a madman, an obsessive—Carolyn had seen similar works in her time at the institute. According to Armitage, though, the reverse was true. Albert Wilmarth was not only very sane, but a skeptic of the highest order.

In addition to being the university’s assistant professor of English, Wilmarth was an enthusiastic amateur folklorist. His particular focus was local myths and legends, a subject he had discussed with Professor Armitage on several occasions. From what Carolyn had read it was clear that Wilmarth was both respectful of these rustic superstitions and, at the same time, deeply scornful of them. He appreciated their worth as metaphor, as fable and moral, but found it consistently irksome when some of his colleagues pointed out common threads running through these myths, and held these connections up as evidence of some deeper, hidden truth.

Wilmarth was presently away from the university, on what Armitage called one of his “interminable field trips.” After poring over the notes he had left in the older Professor’s care, and painstakingly gathering every textbook and monograph they referenced, Carolyn was starting to think that, should she ever meet him, Mr. Wilmarth would find her views rather irksome as well.

Up until now, she could never quite bring herself to believe that Harrigan really had encountered the bizarre creatures he described. Carolyn knew enough physics and biology to rationalize the idea entirely out of existence: no crustacean or insect could grow to such an immense size without being pulped by its own weight. And the idea that such a monstrosity could fly was simply absurd.

Even after what had happened to Councilman Hopkirk, Farrow, and Diana Stanley, Carolyn’s brain had simply refused to process the notion. She could imagine the creature existing, could visualize it deliberately and consciously. But as soon as she stopped concentrating, the winged monster would slipped back into simple delusion once more.

That comfort was lost to her now.

She had read transcribed testimonies from a clan of Vermont farmers who had tracked strange curved hoof-prints back to a cave in the high hills, and had seen winged beasts launching themselves from the cliff tops at night. She had seen reports from explorers who had braved the great Himalayas, and whose native guides had told them of horrible “Mi-Go,” or wildmen, who draped their insectile bodies in animal furs to keep out the cold. She had seen photographs of cave paintings attributed to the extinct Chumash tribe, depicting eyeless bugs as big as a man flying down from the stars on vast membranous wings. And here, in the book under her fingertips, were the legends of the lost Pennacook people of the Merrimack river valley: eerie tales about flying crabs from above the sky who could change their horrid bodies to talk in human tongues, and whose voices sounded as though beehives had learned to speak.

Wilmarth could deny the connections all he liked, Carolyn decided. The unmistakable image of these creatures arose all the way from New England to Nepal.

“Winged Ones,” she muttered. “Mi-Go. Star-crabs. Different names, but the same imagery, over and over again. Professor, why haven’t we heard about this before?”

Armitage spread his hands. “These are the words of forgotten Indian tribes and inbred hill folk, Dr. Fern. People who have been deliberately and systematically removed from the public consciousness. And besides…” He held up one of the pages. “Pixies and fairies have an aesthetic appeal. Would you lull your children to sleep with tales such as these?”

“I take your point, sir.” She put the monograph down. The air in the office felt suddenly cold, the darkness of the library unforgiving. She hugged herself. “Professor?”

“Hm?”

“Did you suspect any of this? When you heard about Councilman Hopkirk?”

Armitage stroked his bearded chin absently. “I made a tentative connection, yes. I even discussed the matter with Wilmarth, but of course he dismissed my concerns.”

“Did you talk to anyone else?”

“No. Poor Mr. Hopkirk took his own life soon afterward. There were no other sightings. To my shame, I convinced myself that the man had indeed been drinking, or suffered a temporary insanity. And thought no more of it until you came here tonight.”

He wasn’t looking at her. Instead, Armitage seemed to be studying his own folded hands as they rested on the tabletop. Carolyn could see that he blamed himself for not speaking up and failing to support Hopkirk at the lowest ebb of his life.

She doubted that any intervention could have saved the councilman. Had Armitage made his concerns public, he would have accomplished nothing but the destruction of his own career. He must have known this. Still, the guilt on his face was plain, and Carolyn felt for him. “Professor?”

His eyes flicked up. “Yes, my dear?”

“We have to do something about this.”

“I agree.” He squared his shoulders a little. “The legends indicate that these creatures do not normally trouble humankind, unless they are disturbed. But this one seems to be different. Perhaps it has gone rogue, or insane.”

“Or has another agenda. In any case, sir, it has to be stopped.”

He nodded. “However, I think it is clear we cannot rely on the authorities. Councilman Hopkirk saw the beast firsthand and was not believed. This is up to us, and whoever else we can enlist. Where might your soldier friend be?”

“Mark Harrigan?” Carolyn made a face. “Probably in jail, if he hasn’t gotten himself killed already. But I left a message with Mrs. Cleaver back at the boarding house, so if he goes back there he’ll—”

She paused. There was a sound from outside the office, a dull thudding. “What in the world is that?”

Armitage got up, frowning. “The door,” he said.

Carolyn turned in her seat. The office was on the third floor, and if the library hadn’t been so silent, she might not have heard the sound at all. As she listened, though, it came again, up from the stairwells and the railed gallery that allowed students to peer vertiginously down from the upper levels of the Orne to the lower: someone was hammering at the main doors.

“Perhaps that’s him now.” Armitage pulled open his desk draw and took out a bunch of keys. “He certainly seems insistent.”

“I’m not sure…” Carolyn got up, padded to the office door. There was a smaller office outside, usually occupied by Armitage’s secretary, and beyond that the foreboding darkness of the library itself. “Could it be a student?”

“On a Sunday? After hours?” Armitage sniffed. “They wouldn’t dare.”

A knot of unease had formed behind Carolyn’s throat. “Professor, wait.”

“He sounds in a hurry, Doctor. If danger is close at hand, we might be his only sanctuary.” He walked briskly past her, through the secretary’s office, then paused at the doorway. “Ah. Just in case, Dr. Fern. What does this fellow look like?”

“About five-ten, short sandy hair. Wears a trench coat.”

“Very well. Please wait here, Doctor. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Before she could speak again, he was striding away into the dark, the keys chiming in his hand.

Carolyn stood for a moment, watching his retreating back until it was swallowed by shadow. The sound of his footsteps on the marble stairs echoed weirdly away into the cold silence.

“Damn it,” Carolyn muttered, after a minute or so. “I don’t like this.”

For a moment she almost called after him, but the idea of shouting into the echoing dark troubled her. After hours or not, she was in a library, and raising her voice there was something she could no more do than crack jokes in church. Instead, she crept out of the office, finding her way by the light streaming past her from within, and went to the gallery railing.

She leaned over. Two floors below, Armitage’s keys were rattling in the locks of the main door.

She heard the door pulled ajar, then voices. Armitage first, then another man’s. Distance and the library’s acoustics robbed them of meaning. She couldn’t be sure if she was hearing Harrigan down there or not.

The voices rose. There was a clatter, a shout that sounded like Armitage. Then a heavy impact.

Carolyn jerked back from the railing. Far below, she heard the door close.

Suddenly she was finding it hard to breathe, and her heart was leaping behind her ribs. She went to the railing again, gripped its curved wooden top tightly in both hands, and peered over.

Narrow cones of light swung back and forth in the darkness below her, tilting and bobbing silently.

Her breath caught. There were people with flashlights down there, at least two of them, and they were moving through the library in silence. There was no way she could interpret that as a good thing, not if Armitage had fallen silent, too. It was, she had discovered over the past couple of hours, often quite difficult to get the professor to be quiet.

Someone down there had managed it, and she didn’t want to think about how.

She stepped away from the rail, unsure of what to do. As she did so, one of the flashlight beams stopped moving. Then the other froze. A second later both went out.

Carolyn heard a man’s voice, quiet and distant. “Up there.”

She stifled a curse and shrank back. Somehow they had spotted her, although she couldn’t think how. She should have been out of their eyeline, and she hadn’t made a sound she was aware of.

She looked wildly around, wondering if she could get to one of the other stairwells before the men came up to her floor, or if she should try to lock herself in the office and telephone the police.

Which would have been a fine idea, had Armitage not taken the keys down with him.

Besides, she would never have the time. The flashlight beams were back on, dancing and twisting. The men were climbing the spiral stairs toward her, one on each of the two main stairwells. Carolyn was certain that there was another set of stairs at the back of the library, but she had no idea where. She would be caught before she could reach them, she was certain of it.

She left the rail and ducked between two nearby bookshelves.

A light appeared at the top of one stairwell, swinging slowly around. Carolyn shrank back behind the bookshelf, peering between the volumes. There was a small gap above one of the books, and she put her eye close to it, watching as a man in a long open coat and fedora climbed the last few steps. He was tall, short-necked, his wide face lit weirdly by the glow of his flashlight and the faint spill from Armitage’s office.

She tilted her head, saw a long, hazy strip of yellow cast on the library ceiling. The men hadn’t seen her, they’d spotted the light from the office door. That was why they had turned off their flashlights—to see it better.

A second man had joined the first. This one was smaller and stocky, clad in a short jacket and flat peaked cap. He nodded at the office. “Told ya.”

They moved toward it together. Carolyn edged back as they neared her, keeping as much bookshelf as she could between them and her.

She saw them walk quickly to the office door, standing on either side of it. The smaller man put his head around quickly, scanning the interior, then relaxed. “It’s clear.”

“Yeah, but she’s around somewhere.” The taller man was pacing into the office. “Her coat’s here.”

Carolyn froze. A sick cold shiver jolted through her. These men were not just random intruders.

They were looking for her.

She had hung her coat and hat up to dry in the office when she had moved there from the reading table. The men had recognized the garments as hers, which meant they either had detailed descriptions of her or they had seen her already. Perhaps they had been following her before now, and something had happened to graduate them from passive observance to active pursuit.

In any case, the sooner Carolyn was away the better. Whatever these two wanted, she had no desire to speak to them.

Both men were in the office now. Carolyn began to move backward, between the shelves. If she could skirt around the end of the row without being heard, she could get to the far stairwell.

“They’ve been busy,” the bigger man was saying. “What the hell’s all this?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yeah, it does. Wait up.” There was a silence, and then: “Shit.”

“What?”

“Listen to this. ‘And there came from the sky those people who we called the Winged Ones, who were clawed as crabs from the sea.’”

He was reading from the Pennacook monograph. Despite the closeness of the men hunting her, Carolyn paused to listen.

“‘And who spoke to the elders with the voice of the hive,’” the man continued. There was a thump as the monograph hit the desk. “Sound familiar?”

“Damn it.” The smaller man sounded put out.

“You heard the boss. She pokes her nose in, she’s gone. What does this look like to you?”

“Yeah, I know. I just hate whacking dames, is all.”

“Don’t bother me.” The taller man’s voice was getting louder. He was heading for the door.

“That’s ’cause you’re an asshole.”

The man chuckled. “Thanks for that, Hookie. Now let’s make this quick and easy, okay? I’ve got a date.”

The flashlights came back on. Carolyn was already at the other end of the row, her back pressed against the cool wood of the bookshelf. She saw cones of light scan past her. The men were twenty feet from her, maybe less. Getting closer.

Her body was almost rigid with fright, her legs shaking, her gut knotted. An icy coldness had gripped her insides. She could barely breathe; terror had its hand around her throat, and it was squeezing the life from her.

She had been right. People were being killed because of what they knew about the Winged Ones. Now she knew too, and she was going to die because of it. These two men were going to hunt her down and slaughter her, right here in the dark.

Then they would make her disappear, and no one would ever know where she had gone.

“Hookie?” said the tall man.

“What?”

“Get by the stairs. Don’t want her going past us.”

For assassins, Carolyn thought frantically, the men were talking a great deal.

They probably didn’t care if she heard them or not. They had done this kind of thing before, and they were assured of their prowess. One unarmed young woman would not offer them much of a challenge.

A little bit of anger sparked in Carolyn Fern then.

She listened to the shorter man’s footsteps as he headed for the top of the stairs, counting his paces. The library’s echoes made the judgment difficult, but it sounded as if he was going to stand very close to the top of the steps.

He stopped. Carolyn couldn’t see his flashlight beam. He was facing away. She had been given the one and only chance she was going to get.

She hurled herself around the corner of the bookshelf and across the floor at him.

He heard her almost instantly, and whirled around, but she was running very fast by then. He shouted, a wordless yell, and then she slammed into him with all the force she could muster. His cry went high and panicky as he stumbled backward.

They went over the edge together.

Carolyn didn’t try to stop herself. All thought of self-perseveration was gone; she rode the man’s chest down as he tumbled. He went over fast, his back slamming into the hard marble steps, a solid sound as his skull struck the edge of one, and then the next and the next. He twisted in pain and Carolyn lost her grip, scrambling up and off him as he rolled down the first flight to fetch up in a heap against the rail, the flashlight spinning out a whorl of light as it flew from his grip.

Carolyn righted herself, raised her foot, and stamped savagely down into the man’s groin. The breath went out of him in a high whoop, and he curled up.

There was a flash above her, an echoing smack of sound and a hand-sized chunk of rail whined apart. Carolyn yelped in shock and then ducked forward and away, hurling herself down the next flight of stairs. Another bullet buzzed past her, an insect whir followed by the flat slap of lead on marble. She had felt the passing of it. A few inches away and it would have crashed through her skull.

The thought spurred her down, shoes clattering fast on the steps. The taller man was hammering after her, his stride longer but he was still having to watch his footing on the gleaming marble. He’d probably had to vault over his fallen comrade, too.

Carolyn reached the bottom of the stairwell and dove toward the doors.

There was a movement in the shadows ahead, a scuffling. For a ghastly instant Carolyn was certain that a third assassin had been left at the library entrance to prevent her escape, and that she had run right into his sights. But then a silver head rose into the light, eyes screwed shut in pain.

“Professor!” she gasped. “Run!”

He hardly looked capable of standing. Carolyn scrambled into him, grabbed him as best she could, and propelled him toward the tall front doors of the library.

If the assassins had thought to lock them in, both she and Armitage would be dead in seconds.

The professor stumbled into the door and sagged against it. Carolyn reached past him, grabbed the icy brass handle and pulled it as hard as she could.

The door swung inward. Cold, rain-wet air washed over her.

She went through sideways, pulling Armitage with her. Heavy footsteps were already slapping toward her from within. She heard two shots behind her, felt the heavy door shiver in her grasp, but the wood was too thick and solid for the lead to penetrate. A moment later, she was outside, Armitage sprawling at her feet.

A man was right in front of her, blocking her way. She screamed into his face.

“Jesus!” said Harrigan, stepping back. “What the hell?”

For a heartbeat all Carolyn could do was stare at him, gape-mouthed. The terror and shock and the mad, exhausting flight down the steps had congealed into a shivering glob at the back of her throat, and there were no words in her.

Her jaw worked uselessly. She pointed back toward the library. “There,” she managed.

The door flew back, wrenched inwards. The tall man was behind it, his face a mask of fury under his hat brim, the stubby blue-black pistol in his fist swinging up at her. She saw the gun flash sparks into the night.

The bullet whined past her right ear.

Harrigan had shoved her hard to the side. She stumbled, tripped over her own ankles, and crumpled up, rolling to an undignified and uncontrolled halt on the wet ground. By the time she was able to get her head up, Harrigan was already gone. She could hear shouts from inside the library, crashing noises. A sound like a hammer hitting a beef joint.

She tried to get up, but her legs simply gave up on her. Her whole body was starting to shiver as though frozen. She slumped again, and ended up sitting forward on the soaking grass, hugging her knees.

The fight inside the library had ended. Harrigan was limping out, wincing as he rubbed the knuckles of his right hand.

A shape loomed over Carolyn then, blocking out the streetlamps. She raised her head as what felt like a thick coat came down around her shoulders, and saw a face above her, very white, framed by untidy dark hair and smiling a strange, conspiratorial smile.

Diana Stanley put a finger to her lips. “Hush,” she breathed.

She might have saved herself the word. Carolyn’s tongue was dead in her mouth. She could not have spoken as she watched the other woman turn and vanish into the night, even if she had been able to think of anything to say.

* * *

The police arrived within ten minutes; Carolyn was certain that if she or Harrigan had called them it would have taken much longer, but a request for assistance from Professor Henry Armitage himself was enough to send two cars speeding up to the university gates, their bells ringing loudly enough to wake half the campus.

She was back on her feet by the time they arrived. The shivering fit hadn’t lasted long, and Diana’s coat had warmed her almost as much as the sight of the woman herself. Having at least one of her fears proved false was a very welcome thing indeed.

The two would-be assassins were hauled away in handcuffs. Neither of them had spoken since Harrigan had subdued the taller man, but both had subjected Carolyn to some truly murderous looks while they sat on the library floor, their own guns aimed at them by Harrigan and Armitage. Hookie, the fellow she had stomped on, seemed particularly vengeful.

She tried to question them, but it quickly become clear that they weren’t going to talk, so she gave up.

Once they were gone, Armitage and Harrigan spoke to the lead policeman, a portly man in his fifties who introduced himself as Sheriff Engle. Carolyn stayed largely in the background, listening and sometimes nodding in silent agreement as her two companions gave their version of events.

This was, of course, a somewhat edited story. They had already agreed that it would do no good to speak of conspiracies or monsters to anyone, and to the police least of all. Armitage simply informed Engle that the library was home to many rare and valuable books, and so it should really have come as no surprise that local brigands should try to steal from it. That they had chosen to do so on a night when he and Dr. Fern were working late on a research project was coincidence, and nothing more.

As for Mark Harrigan, he had been walking past the library when he had heard gunfire from within. He used to be a soldier, and knew what pistols sounded like. No, he did not know Carolyn or Professor Armitage. No, the injuries he bore were purely the result of his fight with the intruders and had not been sustained in any earlier incident. No, he had not seen a dark-haired woman, dressed in what appeared to be a hospital gown and a few scraps of random clothing, lurking at the edges of the scene.

Eventually Engle told Carolyn and Harrigan not to leave Arkham for a few days, suggested Professor Armitage buy a guard dog, and went on his way.

Harrigan glared at his retreating back. “Those two jerks will be out by morning,” he muttered.

“They tried to kill us,” Carolyn replied. Speaking still felt strange. “He can’t just let them go.”

“Watch him.” He limped over to a nearby chair, turned it around, and eased himself down onto it. He looked utterly exhausted. “The guy behind this, Avery? His boss has half the cops in his pocket. That’s how they got to Diana the first time.”

Carolyn went to him. “Never mind them now. We need to get you to a hospital. You too, Professor.”

“I’m okay,” Harrigan growled.

“Sure.” She folded her arms. “You look like someone took you apart and put you back together wrong.”

He smiled grimly “Funny you should say that.”

“Dr. Fern, I assure you that I’m fine as well.” Armitage rubbed the back of his head. “I used to box when I was younger, and I assure you it takes more than a blackjack to damage this skull.”

Carolyn made an exasperated sound. “You two are impossible!”

“I’ve been in worse shape, Doc.” Harrigan prodded the front of his left thigh, gingerly. The fabric of his trousers was a mass of ragged holes there, and stiff with blood. “Besides, I’ve been poked around enough for one night.”

“One day, Mr. Harrigan, your aversion to doctors will be the end of you.” She took a deep breath, calming herself. “All right, at the very least we need somewhere to rest and plan our next move.”

Harrigan nodded. “Regroup and re-arm. Good thinking. Any suggestions?”

“We shouldn’t go back to the boarding house. I think those men might have been following us earlier in the day.”

“I’ll need to get my case back, but no, we can’t stay there.”

“I have a suggestion,” declared Armitage. “Young Wilmarth owns a pet cat. Awful beast, but he is fond of it. While he has been away my wife has been letting herself into his apartment in order to feed it. I could retrieve her keys.”

“Where is it?”

“On the far side of town, but my motor is parked nearby. I could drive you there.”

Harrigan looked up at Carolyn. “Sounds good to me.”

“We can go past the boarding house for our things, as long as nobody’s waiting there for us.” She turned to Armitage. “Thank you, Professor. That would be wonderful.”

“Save that assessment until after you have met the cat.” He gave her a little bow. “If you will excuse me, I’ll bring the car around.”

“Can we trust him?” asked Harrigan, after he had gone.

Carolyn went to the chair next to him and perched on it. Her clothes were still damp and stained from her fall outside. She very much hoped there were no more gunmen at the boarding house, just so she could change into something dry. “Yes. Yes, we can.”

“Good. Because I’ve got a bunch of questions only a book guy can answer.”

She glanced at him sideways. “I’ve got a few of my own.”

“I’ll bet.”

Neither of them spoke for a minute or two. Then Harrigan lifted his head.

Carolyn heard the noise just after he had. An automobile was groaning toward them; something quite outdated, judging by the sound of the engine.

“What about Diana?” she asked.

“I know where she’ll be.” Harrigan pushed himself up off the chair and extended a hand to her. “Come on, let’s get out of here before Avery sends something worse than goons after us.”

Carolyn was tired enough to take his hand and let him pull her back upright. A sharp smell caught her sinuses as she did so. “Oh dear. Mr. Harrigan, you stink of gasoline. And whiskey.”

“Yeah,” he said, turning for the door. “It’s been that kind of a night.”

Chapter Eleven: The Other Woman

Diana Stanley crouched in the paved yard behind Huntress Fashions and wept, shaking and sobbing in childlike, uncontrollable grief.

Her body was pressed tightly into the corner between the wall of the stockroom and the back door. Without the coat around her she was almost naked, dressed only in a soiled hospital gown and a sweater she had stolen on her way out of the asylum. Her legs were bare, and she had already taken her shoes off and thrown them away in the street. They were stolen as well, and far too small.

It was dark in the yard, and very cold.

Diana was shivering uncontrollably. Her fingers and toes were numb, her teeth chattering, her skin icy. The tears drying on her face felt as though they were freezing there. Her thin, pale body quaked and shook, wracked by waves of physical pain and mental anguish.

And somewhere deep inside her, another Diana looked out on this farce, cataloging the processes of death and distress with a cool, disinterested amusement.

* * *

Throughout most of her adult life Diana had possessed an unusual and very useful talent: she could divide her attentions so perfectly between separate and simultaneous tasks that at times it felt as though she were two people at once.

She had never met anyone who claimed the same skill. In Arkham Asylum there were a few unfortunate souls who had let the ability run to extremes, pitiful lunatics driven to distraction by whole squabbling crowds running around behind their eyes. Diana had nothing in common with them. They were afflicted, deranged, their minds as fragmented and useless as a shattered mirror. Her talent was controlled and constructive, a pragmatic division between what was happening to her body and what occupied her mind.

When engaged in occupations that bored her—sitting in church, for example, or making love, or doing housework—she could send the active part of her mind away on more useful duties, leaving the mundane physicalities to take care of themselves. At social functions she could sit, and smile, and keep up a perfectly acceptable degree of polite conversation, while inside her head she was shrieking in unalloyed fury at the smug, self-important boors surrounding her. And during some nights in the Inner Sanctum of the Lodge, the only way she had been able to function at all was to send the thinking, feeling segments of herself away altogether, and let her body alone commit the odious acts Sanford and his demented cronies demanded of it.

Dr. Herbert West had changed all that.

Diana’s time in Arkham Asylum still lay behind a painful, confusing fog. She had spent her days in the sanitarium veering queasily between blurred, childlike confusion, crippling headaches, and paralyzing terror, always convinced that the loathsome aberration she had seen on the docks was on the verge of seeping into her cell and devouring her where she lay.

She could remember her conversations with Carolyn Fern, but they were abstract things, muddy, half-recalled dreams. She understood on some level that Carolyn had been terribly kind, but she couldn’t understand why, and that simply added to the chaos in her head. Diana knew she was not worthy of such treatment, even from those closest to her, so this stranger’s concern for her well-being was just one more fragment of a world that made no sense.

Then, after days of this blur, Herbert West had offered her clarity.

He was a strange man, small and blond-haired, the face behind his round spectacles almost girlish in its delicacy. He even carried himself oddly, as though recovering from some old and terrible affliction. Still, he had been quite charming in his way, and ferociously optimistic about what his treatments could achieve. I will remake you, he had told her. One way or another, I will have you up and about.

Thankfully, the memory of what he had done to her was lost, save the fact that it took a very long time, and hurt a great deal. The effect of it, though, was clear: West’s treatment had found the separate sections of Diana’s psyche, the ones she occasionally teased apart to help her through dull or difficult times, and had driven a glittering blade between them.

* * *

That mental blade was a part of her now, a brutal and permanent wedge driven clear through the center of her mind. Behind it, the other Diana sat and observed herself dying from the cold.

It was a peculiar experience. Not a numbness: Diana could feel her frame reacting to the temperature, at least on a surface level. Down in the dark and hidden core of her, though, the sensations meant little. They were sketches, stories, dull anecdotes. She was having hypothermia described to her by her own body, in detail, and finding the description unaffecting.

After a time, this other Diana began to find the process of dying tiresome, and decided to do something about it. Seamlessly, and without fuss, she swapped places with the first Diana, the Diana of fears and tears, and put her quietly behind the blade where she would be safe. Just as she had done when she’d escaped from the asylum, and when she’d met Avery’s men in the woods.

She struggled to her feet.

The back door to the building was locked, but there was a small window alongside it. Diana shrugged her way out of the sweater, bundled it against the rightmost pane and calmly rammed her elbow through it.

The hole it left was big enough to put her whole arm through. She reached around to the door and turned the latch.

There was no real difference in temperature between the inside of the store and the yard, but at least with the door closed behind her Diana was out of the wind. She stood for a while, looking along the narrow, dark hallway that led between the stockroom and her office. There was a curtain at the end of it, and beyond that would be the sales floor. Diana thought about poking her head around the curtain and seeing how her creation had fared while she was away, but quickly decided against it. If anyone was watching the store from the street they would see her.

Besides, she knew the other Diana would find the sight distressing. Instead she made her way to the foot of the stairs, careful not to tread on any broken glass, and went up to the cramped set of rooms she had called home for the past two years.

All the doors were open. Her bedroom was in disarray, the bed overturned, the drawers and wardrobe flung open. Many of her clothes had been strewn around, tossed carelessly onto the bare floor. She wondered who might have done that. Avery’s people, perhaps, or the police. Maybe even local reporters. She had a vague recollection of her disappearance having made the papers.

The room seemed very small. Her cell at the asylum had been bigger. She wondered how she had ever lived here. There must have been a time when she had planned to move out; she could vaguely remember looking around an apartment close to the center of town, and a house near Kingsport, but nothing could have come of it. She must have decided to abandon the idea, to continue putting all her effort and finances into the store.

The money was gone, now. Avery and his pet monster had taken it from her, just as they had taken everything else. Even if Diana reopened Huntress tomorrow, there would be no customers. No one would buy clothes from a madwoman.

She had nothing. Her life in Arkham was over.

Diana tried to feel sad, but that wasn’t her job anymore. Eventually she turned away and padded into the bathroom.

It was lighter there, a streaky streetlamp glow filtering through rain-wet glass and patterned curtains. Diana stood in front of the sink, peering curiously at her reflection in the mirror set above it.

A disheveled, bloodied young woman stared back at her.

The front of her gown was dark, splashed and spattered with half-dried crimson. Her hands were sticky with the stuff too, and greased with whatever disgusting ichor the byakhee had pulsing behind their eyes. The memory of how the blood had got there surged up in her, and for a heartbeat the other Diana leapt into control, their shared body folding forward and emitting a stark cry of horror. Then the cooler, colder Diana stepped back into the light, took a breath, and calmly began to fill the sink.

The water was freezing, but she didn’t mind that. It was enough just to get the blood off her hands, and scrub the asylum reek from her skin.

* * *

The silence was magical.

Arkham Asylum was never still. By day Diana had been continually pestered: examined by the doctors, questioned by specialists, poked and wiped and injected by nurses. Every few minutes, it seemed, some orderly or other would unlock the door to her cell and put his head in, just to make sure she had not fashioned a noose from bedsheets or tried to claw out her own eyes. And the nights were worse, because that was when many of the inmates decided to give voice to their insanities, their ululations filtering with surprising clarity through the walls of her cell. Occasionally Diana had joined in out of pure frustration, but her heart hadn’t been in it. She was always too tired and confused to howl with any real enthusiasm.

Little wonder, she thought, that everyone in the place was mad.

In other circumstances Diana would have liked to have stayed longer in Huntress, just to luxuriate in the quiet and the feeling of being unobserved. She knew that she was in no position to stand around and enjoy the silence, though. At the very least, the asylum authorities would have the police out looking for her, and if they had not already visited the store in their pursuit they would do so soon. On the other end of the scale, Phillip Avery would probably be keen to have a stern word with her as well. Judging by the ruckus she had raised back in the woods, it appeared she had rather spoiled his fun.

Still, she could not simply flee into the night without making herself presentable first. Evading capture would be far easier if she looked and smelled like a sane woman.

So Diana stripped and bathed thoroughly, or at least as thoroughly as she could using icy-cold water, and then spent an uncomfortable few minutes studying her appearance in the mirror. Her skin was very pale, worryingly white, but there was nothing she could do about that in the time she had. Later on, judicious use of paint and powder might make her less ghostly, but tonight she would just have to embrace the ethereal look.

The mysterious wound on her forehead had almost completely knitted, so she peeled the dressing away and discarded it, brushing her hair forward to cover the stitches.

Then she dressed, putting together a plain, practical outfit from the untouched items in her wardrobe. Anything that was out of place stayed where it was; she didn’t want to wear clothes that had been touched by the intruders. If she was honest with herself, the idea of anyone touching her at all made both Dianas very uncomfortable indeed.

Some more clothes and a few useful items—cigarettes, makeup, a short-bladed fruit knife—had gone into a compact traveling bag, and she had found a pair of shoes that, while not exactly the height of fashion, fit well and would not come flying off if she needed to kick someone.

As she walked downstairs an unbidden thought made her smile. She had made similar preparations before. Then again, that had been another, younger Diana, and one who had been far too trusting. She would not make the same mistakes again.

* * *

Diana was in the stockroom, trying on a black woolen coat and hat, when she heard the back door open.

She froze, listening intently as glass crunched under a shoe. Someone was walking past her, into the hallway, their footfalls slow and careful.

Diana took the fruit knife from her bag, then opened the stockroom door and stepped quickly up behind the invader. He was an older man, straight-backed and silver-haired. In a heartbeat she had an arm around his neck and the point of the knife pressed deep into the delicate skin under his left eye.

“Well, hello,” she said brightly.

She felt his breath catch. “Miss Stanley,” he replied, very quietly.

“You’re Professor Armitage, aren’t you? We met at the Historical Society’s annual gala back in May—I’m sure you don’t remember.” She gave the knife a fractional twist. “You seemed almost as bored as I was.”

“I must admit…I am having some trouble recalling that.”

“Also, I think you were with dear Dr. Fern tonight. On the ground. Are you feeling better?”

“I was.”

“Oh, I’m pleased.” She put her mouth a little closer to his ear. “Now then, isn’t this a pickle?”

His voice was admirably level. “I have been in more comfortable situations.”

“Walking in unannounced is terribly rude.”

“There was always the possibility that you had company. Of the unfriendly variety.”

Her smile broadened. “I’m as alone as I’ll ever be, Professor. And ever so friendly.” She glanced back. “Aren’t I, Mr. Harrigan?”

“Doll, you’re the cat’s pajamas.” He was standing in the hall a few steps behind her. She’d heard him walk in through the open doorway, his heavy tread unmistakable. “And Henry’s on our side, so maybe you could get that shiv out of his face?”

“That rather depends. I’m still not sure why you darling boys are even here.”

“Wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m quite peachy,” she replied airily. “Thank you so much. In fact, you’re lucky to catch me. I was just on my way out.”

“Where are you going to go?” Harrigan took a step toward her.

She tensed, changed the angle of the knife slightly. Armitage drew in a sharp breath, and Harrigan stopped with a jolt.

“I hadn’t made up my mind yet.”

Harrigan’s voice softened. “Diana, listen to me. It’s late. You’ve got no car, no transport. You can’t stay here, ’cause this is where they found you the first time. You just gonna walk around until Avery’s goons pick you up?” He nodded toward her hand, the one that held the knife. “Look at you. You’re half frozen already.”

She followed his gaze, and saw that the blade was vibrating visibly against Armitage’s skin. She hadn’t realized that she was still shivering so badly.

“All right. What do you suggest?”

“We’ve got a place to stay, somewhere Avery doesn’t know about. Carolyn’s already there. You can get warm, make plans. Maybe even sleep.”

“Hm. Sounds perfectly charming.” She hadn’t moved the knife. “Please understand, dear. The last time I accepted an invitation from a gentleman I’m not sure it went well for me at all.”

“I’m no gentleman,” said Harrigan. “Ask Carolyn.”

Diana considered this. He was underestimating her, of course: she had no intention of wandering around in the dark for hours. There were places she could go. The speakeasies were probably off-limits, ever since she had taken the bootlegger’s pickup, but there had to be somewhere a woman could amuse herself until daylight. Even a buttoned-tight little university town like Arkham did not go wholly to sleep when the sun went down.

Then again, Avery’s people were creatures of the night as well. He was certainly in league with the local liquor-sellers, if not in charge of many. If she went anywhere outside the social norms in Arkham there was a very good chance he would know about it.

If she was honest, right now there were exactly two people in Arkham that Diana felt she could trust even slightly. And she was looking at one of them.

“Very well, then, let’s all go and play house.” Diana turned slowly, pushing Armitage around with her, then took the knife from his face and gave him a gentle shove toward the door. “You’ll forgive me if I keep the pair of you in front of me for a while, though. No offense.”

“None taken, I assure you.” Armitage rubbed his eye. “Would you prefer to drive?”

“No, I think I’d rather sit in the back.” She smiled and tapped the tip of the blade very gently against his neck. “Sometimes I just like to watch the world go by.”

* * *

They drove through darkness—the monochrome, inconstant, punctuated gloom of a New England town at night.

Diana sat in the back seat of the car, the fruit knife in her hand, and watched slabs of shadow scan past her on either side. Armitage kept to the narrowest, most hidden roads, steering his wheezing little motor between the high, leaning walls of Arkham’s oldest buildings. The houses there were almost invisible, every door locked and bolted, every window puritanically unlit. No fires burned in their grates, Diana was certain, despite the night’s chill. If anyone lay behind those walls they did so alone and shivering, wracked with cold and the terror of their god’s disapproving gaze.

Every now and then she saw lit streets, rectangles of golden haze flashing between structures and then away, but always at the far end of dark roads, distant, their comforts unattainable. Brief glimpses of another life. And once, she caught sight of the Miskatonic, the high bright arc lamps of the docks dancing on its surface, and the fragment of broken memory that surged up in her brought the other Diana out from behind her blade. She whimpered and shrank in on herself.

Harrigan turned in his seat. “You okay?”

The lights were gone, hidden behind walls of night, and Diana stepped smoothly back into control. “How much farther?”

“Almost there.”

“Oh good. Will there be something to drink at all? I’m just gasping.”

* * *

Wilmarth’s apartment was on the third floor of an unremarkable red-brick building, one of a short row in the east of Arkham. Nothing fancy, Harrigan assured her as they climbed the stairs, but secure.

He was still limping, Diana noticed, although not quite as badly as he had been on the long walk back into town. And Armitage was having some trouble with the climb as well, stopping on each landing to catch his breath. Diana would have been at the top in half the time it took her companions, had she not been keeping them both ahead of her.

She watched the pair struggle with a faint, resigned amusement. An old man, she thought, a cripple, and now a madwoman. Phillip Avery really didn’t have much to worry about.

When they got to the apartment door Harrigan knocked on it, a single hard rap of his knuckles. He waited a count of five and then knocked once again.

Diana raised an eyebrow. “A secret knock, dear? Really?”

“It works.”

She pointed to the tiny glass lens in the center panel. “She could just look through the peephole.”

“I told her not to.” He threw a wary glance back down the stairs. “A good hitman will wait for the lens to go dark on this side, then put a bullet right through the glass.”

Diana was considering that when she heard the door unlock. She stepped back on reflex, away from the two men, her hand dropping back into her pocket where the fruit knife lay.

The door swung inward slightly, revealing a narrow strip of light occluded by part of a face. Diana saw an eye, framed by a round spectacle lens, looking at her.

“We brought a friend,” said Harrigan.

Carolyn Fern didn’t answer. Instead she pulled the door wide, and darted through to wrap her arms tightly around Diana.

Every muscle in Diana’s body locked tight. The shock of the sudden hug made her want to leap away, to rip herself free and draw the knife, while the sheer physical closeness of another human being had her stomach lurching. For a whirling, delirious moment both halves of her psyche—the cold, brutal, pragmatic side and its terrified, horror-struck twin—hurtled into collision over their respective reactions. Fight battled Flight for supremacy of her body.

And nothing happened. She did not move. In the young psychologist’s embrace the broken fragments of Diana Stanley called a temporary truce and, for a very brief time indeed, let themselves be held.

“Hey,” said Harrigan, sounding disappointed. “How come I don’t get a hug?”

“Because I don’t like you very much.” Carolyn stepped back. “Diana, I’m so sorry. That was unprofessional. I mean…”

“It’s okay, dear.” Diana let out a long breath, forcing her frozen muscles to ease. She put a hand gingerly onto Carolyn’s shoulder. “It’s good to see you, too.”

“How are you? Are you all right?”

“I’m just grand, Doctor, thank you.” She forced a smile onto her face. “Shall we go in? We don’t want poor puss running away, do we?”

“What? Oh God, the cat.” Carolyn stepped back, holding the door wide while the others stepped through.

Diana went in last. It was hard to take her hand out of her pocket. Sooner or later, she knew, she would have to relax, to give up her continual mistrust of these people. To close her eyes in their company. But it wasn’t easy to take that step; the woman she once was had been effectively murdered because she had trusted. To put herself in that situation again felt very much like laying her head on the executioner’s block.

Behind her, Carolyn closed the door and locked it. Diana kept very still and tense until she was back in sight, then took off her hat and shook her hair out. “Did somebody mention a drink?”

“Young Wilmarth is resolutely teetotal, I’m afraid,” replied Armitage. “Given the hour, perhaps I should make a pot of coffee.”

She smiled. “Black. And simply piles of sugar, please.”

He gave her a curt nod, and then walked quickly away.

* * *

“Come on through,” Carolyn gestured along the hall, standing to one side to let Diana go past. “Shall I take your coat? The heating’s up a little high.”

No. There’s a knife in the pocket. I need it in case you turn on me and attack me. I need the coat in case I have to run away. “Of course,” she said, shrugging her way out of the stifling black wool and handing the coat and hat to Carolyn. “Thank you so much. It is rather stuffy in here, isn’t it?”

“I think Mr. Wilmarth keeps it that way for his books. Or possibly his cat.” Carolyn took the coat by the collar and shook it straight, then went to hang it up on a nearby hook. “This is nice.”

“It’s new.” Diana wandered into the nearest room, looking carefully around.

She was in what looked like a large study, the ceiling high, the walls papered in a soothing green stripe where they weren’t covered in bookshelves. The room was dominated by a dark, glossy desk, and flanking it stood two vast leather wing chairs, each with a cushioned footstool squatting before it like a cowering servant.

For an academic’s place of work it was surprisingly tidy, although there were some odd touches: a small pile of sporting trophies thrown carelessly into a corner, a globe with several darts sticking out of it, a large tortoiseshell cat regarding her with undisguised contempt from on top of a bookcase.

Diana waved up at it. “Hello, puss.”

The cat blinked slowly, squeezing its eyes shut and then half-opening them again. Diana copied it perfectly, then tilted her head back and opened her mouth in an exaggerated yawn.

Her furry counterpart yawned back in response, showing her a mouthful of white fangs.

“Hm.” Diana grinned. “Nice kitty.”

“It tried to take poor Mr. Harrigan’s hand off earlier,” said Carolyn from the doorway. “Seems to like you, though.”

“Can’t think why.” She went to the nearest chair and sat, perching on the edge of its leather cushion. She could feel the ragged edges of exhaustion surrounding her, closing in. If she became too comfortable, she might fall asleep. She couldn’t be certain she’d wake again if that happened. “So what have you all been up to?”

“Trying to figure out what to do next.” Carolyn walked in and sat down on the footstool in front of Diana’s chair, knees tightly together and hands knotted in her lap. “There’s been some debate on the matter.”

She looked glum, small, crushed under the weight of her nervousness. Diana gave her what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “And how are you doing?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“You already did.”

“I guess.” Carolyn blinked up at her. “And frankly, I’m terrified. Those men tonight, the ones Avery sent? I heard them talking. They were there in the library to kill me.”

“Rather a new experience for you, I’d imagine.”

“I’ll say. I’ve had people threaten me before, even try to do me harm, but that was always…always personal. These men were just on business.” She shuddered. “Avery sent them to make sure I hadn’t been trying to dig up the truth about those alien creatures, and to put an end to me if I had. And after you vanished like that, well…”

“I am sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to scare you. But when the opportunity came up, I had to take it, didn’t I?”

“We thought Avery had gotten to you. You were strapped down, watched all the time.”

Diana chuckled. “Is that what Dr. Lawson told you? Naughty man, he’s such a fibber.” She sat back a bit further, resting against the cool leather back of the chair. “If he was as careful as he likes to believe I’d still be in there, but the plain fact is that he undid the straps to perform one of his silly tests, and simply forgot to do them back up again.”

Carolyn frowned, looking puzzled. “But the nurses…”

“Oh, you can’t blame them, really. They must have been terribly bored. All they could see was poor mad Diana, lying dead to the world, incapable of even wiping her own—” She caught Carolyn’s eye for a moment. “—face. So naturally they toddled off on other business and left me to my own devices. For just long enough.”

“Smart,” said Harrigan. Diana glanced up to see him leaning in the doorway, his arms folded. She shook her head.

“No, Mr. Harrigan. It’s not about being smart. It’s about being ready.”

Carolyn Fern had a very hard, cold look on her face. “As soon as Dr. Hardstrom gets back, I think he and I need to have words,” she said softly.

“You should.” Diana tipped her head back to watch the cat. “I’m sure he thinks he’s running a tight ship, but for all the trouble I had getting out, he may as well fit a revolving door.”

“How long were you walking around for? You must have been frozen.”

“I didn’t really notice. Probably still buzzing with whatever little Herbert pumped into me.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I remembered you telling me about Mrs. Cleaver’s boarding house, and thought a visit might be nice. But as soon as I got there I saw Mr. Harrigan striding forth with such furious intent that I just had to see what he was up to. I’m sure he’s told you what happened after that.”

He snorted. “What I remember, sure.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought it would have been rather hard to forget.”

“The broad strokes, yeah. You’ll forgive me if I lost track of the details.”

“We were hoping you could fill us in on those,” said Carolyn.

Diana shook her head. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I only arrived for the final act. Most of what happened took place while I was wandering around in the woods. If that ghastly shrimp hadn’t been croaking on about the ‘Shard of Panestes’ and his ‘great project’ and whatnot I might still be—” She stopped. Harrigan had his hand up, his eyes wide.

“Say that again. The Shard of what?”

“Panestes, it sounded like. Why, does that mean something?”

“It might.” Carolyn got up, her face set. “Where’s the professor?”

“Still in the kitchen.”

“Hold on.” She ducked past Harrigan and out of the study. Diana heard her pace quickly up the hall.

Apart from letting Carolyn by, Harrigan hadn’t moved from the doorway. Diana raised an eyebrow at him. “Mark, sweetie, please come in and sit down. You wouldn’t want me to get nervous, would you?”

He didn’t move. “Where’s the knife, Diana?”

“Coat pocket.” She let her eyes close. “Oh, I know I should stay vigilant. Aside from our little stroll tonight I don’t know you from Adam. But honestly? I’m just too bloody tired.”

“Still don’t trust me, huh?”

“Would you?” She opened one eye, and grinned at him. “Don’t pout. Let’s say for the moment we have a common enemy.”

“Enemies, plural.”

She waved a hand dismissively. “Avery’s no threat. He’s just a silly boy who fell in with the wrong crowd.”

“The wrong crowd?” Harrigan barked a laugh. “Seriously?”

“Of course. Look what happened to me.” She straightened up and fixed him with a hard gaze. “I know Phillip Avery from the Lodge, and he’s nothing. He’s a weak man with the wrong friends, completely out of his depth. Carl Sanford tolerates him because he wants a connection to Mr. Stone, and Stone sees him as, oh, I don’t know.” She folded her arms, tipped her head back to look at the cat. “A tool. An object that has uses. He gets a little respect in Arkham because he’s a businessman, and money takes you a long way here. But in person he’s pitiable, and he knows it. So he stays out of sight, keeps close to people who can protect him, and does what they tell him to do even when he knows it’s terrible.”

“Sounds like you feel sorry for him.”

“Sympathy? Hm.” She felt that awful smile spread over her face again. “I don’t think I’m capable of that anymore. But his motives are obvious. He’s frightened and lonely and in pain, and that can drive a person down some very dark roads indeed.”

“I’ve got to admit, that makes sense.” He walked in, stood behind the other chair, and leaned onto it, resting his chin on his crossed forearms. “Back in the army, when he was still Orton, he was pretty much that way. Brave enough while he had the big guys at his back, but out on his own he went to pieces.”

“I’ve known men like that. Quite a lot of them, sadly.”

“Not everyone’s a leader. Bad part is, he didn’t know it. Kept trying to make a name for himself, and fell on his ass every time.”

“He’s learned some lessons. But he’s already floundering, I think. Making silly mistakes.” A sudden yawn spasmed up from the back of her throat. She covered her mouth. “Oh my. Please excuse me, I promise it’s not the company.”

He chuckled. “Thanks. You want to get some sleep?”

“Not here, thank you. Unless there’s a room I can lock from the inside.” She saw his expression darken. “Sorry. It’s not you, Mark. It’s…well…let’s just say I’ve been down some dark roads, too. Finding the way back isn’t easy.”

“Tell me about it.” He nodded. “If you work out how, let the rest of us know, okay?”

“It’s a deal. Now then, I wonder what’s keeping Henry with that coffee?”

Chapter Twelve: Across the Eons

Piecing together exactly what had happened to Harrigan since the boarding house had been no easy task. It had taken every psychological and diagnostic skill Carolyn Fern could muster just to tease out the basic sequence of events. The details were almost beyond him.

He was no storyteller at the best of times. Talking, as Carolyn had come to learn in the short time she’d known him, was not something he did readily, or easily. For years he had inhabited a world where silence was safer than words, where lying was the only way to stay free and alive. To him, honesty was a dangerous thing, to be avoided whenever possible.

And even if reticence hadn’t been his natural state, by the time he had reached the apartment Harrigan was almost insensible from pain and exhaustion. His attackers had left him with an impressive collection of bruises, some so livid Carolyn still couldn’t be sure that none of his ribs were cracked. He bore cuts and grazes almost everywhere, there were powder burns on one side of his face where someone had let off a firearm close to his ear, and, of course, the horrific collection of puncture wounds Mr. Stone had inflicted still oozed in his left leg. Getting anything from him but curses and demands to be left alone was a struggle.

At first, Carolyn’s offers to clean and tend his injuries were refused out of hand, but she had always been a persistent young woman, and eventually she just wore him down. It was only once he was bandaged and iodined and sitting in Wilmarth’s study with his bad leg bound and stretched out on a footstool that he could finally begin to describe, as best he could, his encounter with Avery and Mr. Stone in the woods east of Arkham.

* * *

The story he told was horrific. After she had heard it, Carolyn found herself prowling Wilmarth’s apartment in a state of trembling confusion, hugging herself and pacing up and down the hallway as she tried to process everything he had said.

After a time, she had found herself in the kitchen, rooting mindlessly through Wilmarth’s cupboards and poring over the contents of his refrigerator. She had found a tin of Maxwell House and some milk Wilmarth had left for the cat, and while Harrigan and Armitage discussed their situation in the study she had made coffee for the three of them, washing up after the men left to find Diana.

It was a shameful, worthless fragment of domesticity, but it had served to distract her while the silence of the apartment closed in. Now Armitage was engrossed in the same task, and all Carolyn could do was stand by the kitchen door, watching him fill the kettle and envying him the diversion.

“Are you sure I can’t do that for you?” she asked, not for the first time.

“I am quite capable of pouring hot water onto powder, thank you, Doctor.” Armitage set the kettle down and busied himself with the stove, his back to her. “Now, please repeat what Miss Stanley claims to have heard.”

Carolyn took a deep breath, forcing herself to focus. “Um, well…she said it talked about a great project.”

“Which could mean anything,” he snapped. “And the rest?”

“Panestes.” Carolyn stepped forward, pulled a chair out from under the kitchen table, and sat down. “The Shard of Panestes. At first I thought it sounded Greek. Then I decided it didn’t. I’m probably just thinking of Pantocles. You know, from Aristophanes, that soldier—”

She stopped mid-sentence. Armitage had straightened up, one hand raised for silence. “Panestes,” he muttered. “I wonder…”

“Do you recognize it?”

“Maybe.” He dipped to the stove again. Carolyn heard a match strike. “I will need to research it further to be sure, but I believe the monster might have made reference to Paenoestes of Delos.”

“Erm…Professor Armitage, sir, would I be embarrassing myself if I told you that meant nothing at all to me?”

“Not unless you are a student of occult esoterica, no.” There was a soft thud of igniting gas. Armitage turned from the stove, waving the match out. “Paenoestes was an Athenian, a student of Socrates and contemporary of Xenophon. A self-proclaimed wielder of dark arts, I’m afraid, which eventually led to his exile from the city. It is recorded that he ended his days as leader of some kind of oracle-cult, on the island of Delos.”

“That’s, ah, fascinating.” Carolyn blinked. “I think. But what’s it got to do with…well, with us?”

“I cannot imagine,” Armitage replied. “My knowledge of the fellow comes from when I was studying the university’s copy of Unaussprechlichen Kulten, and I confess I have tried very hard to forget as much of that vile tome as possible.” He folded his arms and dipped his head, no doubt reaching back through his prodigious memory. “Panestes, Paenoestes… I would consider the similarity of the names pure coincidence, were it not for the word shard. That is relevant somehow, I am certain of it.”

“I’m sure Diana could remember more if we asked her. Mr. Harrigan, too, with the right context.” Carolyn took her spectacles off and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Fatigue was making her eyes feel gritty, her throat tight. “The great project… Avery and that creature must be planning something. Professor, we need to look at that book again.”

“It would require a drive back to the library. Unaussprechlichen Kulten is the definitive work on the subject, but I would need to remove it from the vault. Its contents are deeply unpleasant, but as a historical artifact it is very valuable.”

Carolyn didn’t like the idea of leaving the apartment unless it was strictly necessary, and especially to return to a place where she had already been attacked once. “Isn’t there anywhere else? Professor Wilmarth seems to have a pretty extensive library.”

He chuckled. “I very much doubt he has a copy of that.” Then he lifted his head. “On the other hand…”

“You remember something?”

“Once I have seen a book,” he told her, smiling rather proudly, “I rarely forget it. The study, third shelf to the left of the door. There is a copy of Fleischer’s Kulten der Antiken Welt, in a red goatskin binding with gold leaf. Little more than a pastiche of Von Junzt, but it could point us in the right direction.”

“I’ll get it.” Carolyn got up, and replaced her glasses. “To be honest, I want to check in on Diana and Mr. Harrigan. I’ve not heard them talking for a while.”

“You are concerned for her welfare?”

“No, sir, for his.” She opened the door and stepped out into the hall.

Harrigan was already there. He was standing near the open study door, still and silent, looking back into the room with a strange, bewildered expression on his face.

“Mark?” Carolyn took a few steps toward him. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged helplessly. “Doc, you’d better come see this.”

Carolyn padded quickly toward the study door, a cold knot of apprehension beating behind her sternum. Harrigan stepped aside to let her in, pointing as she did so.

“You wanna tell me what the hell’s going on there?”

Carolyn saw what he was indicating and slowed her pace. When she moved into the study she did so as carefully and quietly as she could.

Diana Stanley was still in the armchair. She was sitting sideways, curled into an almost fetal position, her knees drawn up and arms wrapped tightly around them. Her head was tilted sideways, her right cheek resting on her knees, and her eyes were closed.

She was crying quietly, tears streaming down her face.

“Diana?” Carolyn breathed the woman’s name, moving slowly toward her as she spoke. There was no reaction. Diana neither opened her eyes nor paused her sobbing. Her breathing was deep and slow, punctuated only by tiny, almost silent hitches as she wept.

It was an eerie sight. Carolyn shivered as she turned to Harrigan. “She’s asleep.”

“I know. She went out really fast.” He shook his head. “How can she be crying and sleeping at the same time?”

She stepped closer to him, keeping her voice very low. She didn’t want to wake Diana. “It can happen. I’ve seen it before.”

“In patients?”

“Sometimes.” Carolyn nodded. “It can be a symptom of personality disassociation, schizophrenia… I don’t think Diana’s suffering from anything quite like that, but there’s a part of her that isn’t truly asleep, even though the rest of her is.”

“And that part’s not happy.”

“Would you be?” She took his arm and ushered him away. “Come on, we should leave her alone. At least one of us will get some rest.”

* * *

Carolyn had taken the book Armitage had described as she left the study. It was an ugly thing, a swollen slab of yellowing pages bound in cracked red leather. Scraps of dull gold leaf still clung tenaciously to the cover, a broken ribbon of specks and fragments where the title had once been, and when Armitage opened the book up a sour, slippery odor wafted from it.

He had put on a pair of white cotton gloves to read it, but Carolyn couldn’t decide whether that was to protect the book’s filmy pages from his fingers, or the other way around.

While she and Armitage sat at the kitchen table, Harrigan paced. “Greece, now?”

“It’s possible.” Carolyn gulped at her coffee. It wasn’t very good, but it warmed her, and she hoped it would help her tiredness when the caffeine hit her bloodstream. “The research we did at the library showed evidence of these creatures all over the world.”

Harrigan stopped and looked down at her, hands stuffed into his pockets. “Doc, I’m really grateful for all the help you and Henry have been on this. But right now I don’t care about the other ones. If they want to mine the Himalayas or turn Vermont into Swiss cheese then fine, let ’em get on with it. Just as long as they don’t involve me.” He leaned back against the sink. “The only thing I need to know is where Mr. Stone’s hiding out, and what we can do to kill the damn thing when we find it.”

“Well, now that we are certain of Phillip Avery’s involvement,” said Armitage, not looking up from his studies, “I suppose it would be far too obvious to suggest it lives with him?”

Harrigan snorted. “Separate beds, I hope.”

The professor seemed to wince, very slightly. “Very amusing, Mr. Harrigan, I’m sure.”

“Doesn’t Avery live out of town?” Carolyn had seen mentions of the man’s property while trawling the local newspapers. “A mansion somewhere, I think…”

“Spaulding House,” muttered Armitage.

“That’s the place. If it’s big and remote enough, he could hide all kinds of things up there.”

“A mansion, huh?” Harrigan appeared to consider this. “Wonder how he got his hands on a place like that.”

Armitage lowered the book. “Quite legally, I’m sorry to say. Wilfred Spaulding signed ownership of the building to Avery in the spring of 1919, in the clerk’s office of Arkham town hall.”

Carolyn stared at him. “You have got to be kidding. How could you possibly know that?”

“I never ‘kid,’ young lady.” Armitage sniffed imperiously, obviously quite displeased to have his recollections doubted. “I know because I was there.”

She sat back. “Go on.”

“Very well.” He closed the book carefully. “I attended the proceedings as a representative of the Arkham Historical Society. Wilfred Spaulding had been a member for many years, and had promised that the house would be left to the Society in his will.” His voice softened. “Poor Wilfred. His health was never good, and toward the end he was almost a recluse, trapped up in that place. I think he just wanted to be rid of it.”

“And then Avery came along.”

“Indeed. The first time I heard his name was when we were informed he was about to take ownership. I went to the town hall personally. One last attempt to remind Wilfred of his promise. And our friendship.”

Harrigan moved closer to the table, picked up his own cup. “He didn’t bite, then?”

“Alas, the fellow was barely in a condition to sign the paperwork, let alone speak to me. Avery did most of the talking. I left disappointed, and Wilfred was never seen in Arkham again.”

Carolyn stiffened very slightly. When she glanced at Harrigan, his eyes met hers, and she realized they were both thinking the same, rather unpleasant thought. “How exactly did Wilfred look, Professor?”

“The poor man was in a parlous state. Terribly ill. Hunched in a wheelchair, bundled in so many layers of clothing I could barely see him. His voice was horrible, a rasping…” Armitage trailed off, his eyes widening. “Oh dear.”

Carolyn sighed. “I think it’s safe to say that Wilfred wasn’t exactly himself that day, sir.”

“So it’s been there for a while, then.” Harrigan tipped his cup to Carolyn in ironic salute. “Cozy.”

“At least we have an idea of where it is.” Her own cup was empty. She couldn’t even remember drinking the rest of the coffee. “Just not why it’s here. Mark, do you remember anything else that it said?”

“Not really.” He took a sip, and then stopped with the cup still lifted. “Something about going forth among the masses… It sounded kind of religious.”

Carolyn turned beseechingly to Armitage. “Professor?”

“I wish I could be more certain,” he told her. “According to Fleischer, the Shard of Panestes was a protective charm, a talisman used by the oracle-cult on Delos.”

“And somehow those bugs ended up with it in Mexico.” Harrigan moved to the nearest chair and dropped heavily onto it. “It didn’t look like any kind of charm that I know. Damn ugly thing, like a chunk of broken statue.”

“It sounds like you remember it quite vividly.”

Harrigan toyed with the cup, turning it over in his hands. “Kinda hard to forget anything about that day. Besides, sounds like I’ve been walking around with chunks of it buried in my leg for ten years.”

“I wonder what the effects of that might be,” said Armitage.

“Didn’t protect me worth a hoot, I tell you that. Not me or…” Harrigan trailed off. “Or anyone else.”

His wife, Carolyn thought. Whatever had happened, the memory of her was a blade in him. “Okay. It sounds like Mr. Stone has been trying to complete this Shard for years. Maybe it has something to do with the cult on Delos—Diana spoke about the Silver Twilight Lodge as some sort of cult when she was ill. Could Avery be trying to revive it?”

Armitage drew in a breath. “I fervently hope not. Their methods were less than pleasant.” He tapped the book. “Fleischer refers to it as ‘the Cult of the Unseen Devourer.’”

“Oh. That doesn’t sound good at all.”

“Unseen Devourer…” Harrigan’s voice was strange, suddenly very quiet and tense. “Does it say anything else?”

“A little, although it is rather gruesome and I’m not sure how relevant—”

“Henry.” Harrigan’s fingers were tight around the coffee cup, his scarred knuckles white. “Please.”

Armitage glanced furtively at Carolyn. She gave him a curt nod.

“Of course. Ah, it would appear that the Shard allowed Paenoestes to conjure certain entities. Fleischer calls them ‘Feeders from Within.’ These demons would enter the bodies of cult members, inhabiting them and causing them to suffer terrible visions for months. The poor souls became the oracles of the cult, their delusions recorded as prophesy.”

“That’s horrible,” Carolyn whispered. “You said months… What happened to them after that?”

“I can only assume that the creatures within them lived up to their name.”

There was a splintering chime next to her. She started at the sound of it, saw pieces of china spinning on the floor. Harrigan had crushed the cup. White fragments of ceramic were poking from between his hands, threads of crimson already sliding down his fingers to drip fat glossy droplets onto the floor.

His eyes were tightly shut.

“Heavens!” Carolyn jumped up, took his arm, and pulled him to his feet. “Get your hands under the tap, come on. Professor? We’ll need the first-aid kit again.”

For a moment or two he allowed her to move him. He was all shivers, no strength in him, no resistance. Then, halfway to the sink, he froze, his muscles locking so suddenly that Carolyn almost lost her balance.

“Mark?” She nudged him gently.

“Let me go,” he breathed.

“You’re still bleeding.”

“Carolyn.” He opened his eyes and looked down at her, his face very calm and blank. “You have to let me go now.”

Her mouth opened, but the sound of his words had killed the protest on her tongue. Instead she nodded slowly, lifted her hands, and stepped back.

He held her gaze for a heartbeat, then spun away, bolting from the room. The broken cup in his hands flew from him as he ran and went whirling to the floor, bouncing and dancing in his wake.

The door swung closed after him. Carolyn heard his footfalls hammering down the hall, a clatter as the front door was wrenched open, and then silence.

He was gone.

Armitage was on his feet, eyes wide. “Dr. Fern, what in—”

She held up her hand for silence, listening, straining to hear anything. The only sound was her own ragged breath, and the slow sad rattle of bloody porcelain rocking to a stop on the kitchen floor.

“What was that? Doctor, what just happened?”

“I don’t know… A memory trigger, maybe.” She put a hand to her face. The shock of Harrigan’s exit had left her shaking. “God. Something he’s repressed, maybe for years. It just broke through his defenses.”

“And you let him go? In that state?”

“Trust me, Professor, if I’d not gotten out of the way he’d have gone through me. His Fight or Flight just kicked in hard, and I’d rather it was one than the other.”

“But he could go anywhere!”

“Yes,” she said wearily. “He could.” She went to the door.

“Doctor, wait.” She heard him take a few steps after her, as if intending to follow. Then his footsteps faltered. “Where are you going?”

Suddenly he sounded very tired, and very old.

Carolyn smiled sadly at him, back over her shoulder. “It’s cold,” she said quietly. “He’ll need his coat.”

* * *

Harrigan had left his trench coat on its hook by the door. Carolyn lifted it free on her way out, holding it slightly away from herself as she walked down the stairs. It still smelled quite powerfully of gasoline and bad whiskey, of mud and sweat and the indefinable reek of the creatures that had attacked him. It was stained and torn, a ragged thing, and instinctively she wanted to throw it away, or at least to drop it into a tub of hot water and Chipso. But its familiarity would be an anchor to Harrigan, and from the look on his face when he had left the apartment, he needed all the stability she could offer him.

She had suspected that the energy of his distress would fade quickly, and when she got to the front door of the apartment block and peeked out into the freezing night, she saw that she’d been right. Harrigan was sitting on the running board of Armitage’s motor, a cigarette glowing orange between his fingers.

His head was down, and the cigarette, unheeded, was turning slowly to ash in his hand.

Carolyn walked to the car, making just enough noise to let him know she was approaching. When she reached him she said nothing, just bent and sat on the board alongside him.

She was small. There was just enough space.

The movement of the car roused him. His head came up. “Sorry.”

“Cups get broken all the time.” She passed him the coat. “It’s cold, Mark.”

“I can’t feel it.”

She looked at his hand. There was a cloth tied roughly around it. He was trembling, whether with cold or his own internal torment she could not tell. Probably both. “No,” she said. “But you will.”

He hesitated, then took it from her. He raised the cigarette and dragged it down to nothing with one shuddering inhalation, then dropped the small spent thing and let its glow die on the asphalt in front of him. She saw him watch it fade.

Carolyn had never seen such loss in a man’s eyes before. It chilled her, utterly, worse than the night air ever could.

To her credit, she did not react. Didn’t move, didn’t start or shrink away, didn’t say anything at all. People who hadn’t been trained as she had, who hadn’t seen what she had seen would feel the need to talk, to try and offer some comfort. Carolyn knew better than to speak.

I know how you feel. I understand. Be strong. Cheer up. I can help.

Idiot words. Pointless and harmful. If Harrigan had wanted to talk, he would have stayed inside. All he needed now was silence.

Carolyn put her hand on his, very briefly, and then stood up. She had intruded on his grief enough for one night.

* * *

She walked slowly back through the apartment, the soles of her shoes soft-clicking on the polished floor. Most of the lights had been turned out to avoid attracting attention from outside, and only the gentle glow of a single table lamp lit her way. She moved through cool shadows, and felt unreal amongst them, insubstantial, a ghost of herself.

Classic symptoms of exhaustion. Sleep did not come easily in Arkham, but Carolyn knew she had to rest, if only to still the turmoil in her mind.

There were two bedrooms in the apartment, but she didn’t feel comfortable going into them. Instead she made her way back to the study. The door was still open, the lights inside switched off. Carolyn went in, feeling her way, and sank into the unoccupied chair.

Across from her, Diana Stanley breathed slow and deep through her tears.

Carolyn closed her eyes, listening to the other woman sleep. She found herself trying to imagine what was going on behind those closed eyes, what traumas still roiled in that damaged mind. Whether Diana Stanley would ever again be truly sane.

When she had seen her alive and seemingly well, that first time outside the library, Carolyn had been more pleased than she could believe. She had thought Diana permanently catatonic at best, or more likely spirited away and unceremoniously murdered. To witness her in full control of her faculties was a better outcome than she could have hoped for.

Now, though, her relief was replaced by a dull, sickening worry. Far from being cured of her manias, it seemed as though Diana had merely channeled them, forged them into a mental armor to protect herself against the world. But the shell she had put around herself was brittle, fragile, like miscast iron. Its edges were lethally sharp, and within it lay all the shivering terrors that had plagued her since her fall into the Miskatonic.

Diana was not cured. She was not sane. She was teetering on the brink of a catastrophic mental breakdown and, if what Harrigan had told them was correct, she was a murderess three times over.

And yet, despite everything she had learned in her time as a clinical psychologist, all her experiences and all her oaths, Carolyn could not condemn her. She would not seek to have Diana returned to the asylum, not unless her condition deteriorated and she became a danger to innocent people. No more could be done for her there.

Nor could she blame Mark Harrigan for the violence he had done, and still planned to do. She had caught a glimpse of his pain, out by the car, and its depth had horrified her. For him, this was no longer merely about revenge for what had happened to his comrades in Mexico, or for the death of Malachi Farrow. There was a viler connection between Harrigan and Mr. Stone, something so dark and so awful that she was certain he would never be able to properly speak of it. She wondered how intense the love between him and his wife must have been, for her death to have demolished him as it had.

She thought of the four of them, sitting silently in their tiny puddle of light, sleeping or reading or staring hollow-eyed into their own personal abyss. Henry Armitage, haunted by his inaction during Edward Hopkirk’s fall from grace. Diana, her mind shattered by Avery and Mr. Stone and remade as a weapon. Mark Harrigan, running from war and loss and the memory of his dead wife, forced on by guilt toward the promise of a dark and violent redemption. And Carolyn Fern, who had tried to absolve herself of complicity in Farrow’s ending and instead unleashed monsters on them all.

Four people with nothing in common, except that they had discovered a hidden and dangerous truth. Four people waiting for the night to close in and devour them.

In her mind’s closing eye she saw the apartment shrinking away, as though her perceptions were rising high and fast over it. The town outside its walls was hazy and translucent, grey glass fading and all around it the rushing of an infinite ocean, lightless and unspeakably cold, mindless and thoughtless and uncaring.

Her last image was that of something rising up through the black water toward her, circular and luminous, fixing her with an eternal alien gaze, but before it broke through the waves it was gone and she was sleeping, dreamless and utterly still. Only breath separated her from the grave.

* * *

She awoke to voices, murmured through closed doors.

It was still dark. Carolyn took off her spectacles and rubbed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose. She felt groggy and disorientated, the room tipping slightly around her. She had no idea how long she had been asleep, but unless she had slumbered clear through Monday and into darkness again, it wasn’t long enough.

When she replaced her glasses, her vision cleared enough for her to see that the other chair was empty.

The voices were at the edge of her hearing. They wouldn’t have been loud enough to wake her. She reached back through the fog of sleep and found a vague impression of some harsher sound, a metal ratcheting. On a normal night she would probably have slept through it, but Carolyn hadn’t experienced an uninterrupted night since arriving in Arkham. Her nerves were too stretched, her mind too full. The slightest of noises roused her now.

She stood up, taking a couple of deep breaths to steady herself, then made her way out of the study and into the hall. The voices were louder there, but still murmured. The speakers were keeping their voices low, maybe to avoid waking her, a kindness that would have been more effective had the metallic sound not been so startling.

The voices issued from the nearest bedroom. Carolyn padded as quietly as she could up to the door and put her ear close to it.

“How about one of those?” said Diana from behind it.

“No dice.” Harrigan sounded annoyed. “You’d limp-wrist it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Listen, doll, this isn’t a revolver. If you don’t brace it damn hard the slide won’t go back and you’ll stovepipe the next bullet. You don’t know how to clear a jam and I haven’t got time to teach you.”

“My arms are quite up to the job, thank you. And Carolyn, dear, please stop skulking around out there and come in.”

Carolyn’s eyes widened. As far as she knew she hadn’t made any sound at all. Diana’s hearing must have been truly phenomenal. That, or her perceptions were heightened as a kind of subconscious defense mechanism; certain that it was surrounded by threats, her psyche was on perpetual edge, hyper-aware, every sense on constant alert.

That was an exhausting state for any mind to remain in. Carolyn wondered how long Diana could stay so watchful, before the continual mental effort sent her into complete psychological collapse.

She pushed the door open and peered around it. “Good morning.”

The room was quite small. The bed, brass-framed and covered in a plain quilt, took up almost half its space. The rest was filled with a wardrobe and matching chest of drawers, a small armchair, and Mark Harrigan, who was standing in the middle of the room with two halves of a Thompson submachine gun in his hands.

His suitcase, opened to display all its frightening contents, lay on the quilt.

“Only technically.” Diana was sitting on the bed, her shoeless feet dangling over the side and her back against the edge of the case. “As far as I’m concerned four o’clock is still nighttime, but Mr. Harrigan was most insistent.”

“We’ll have a better chance if we go in before dawn,” he growled. Carolyn watched him line up the two parts of the weapon and then push them together, ramming one hard into the other with a snap of metal on metal. The same sound that had woken her. “We’ve waited too damn long already. God knows what that bug’s planning.”

Carolyn glanced around. “Where’s Professor Armitage?”

“Asleep.”

“He did try to keep up, the poor dear,” said Diana. She slid off the bed and stood up, stretching. “But he started nodding off over his books, so I popped him into bed. I do hope his wife won’t take exception.”

Harrigan looked surprised. “He’s married?”

“Practically domesticated,” Diana smirked. “Besides, it’s for the best that he sleep through this part. He’s aware of the necessity, I think, but actually seeing the preparations might rather disturb him.”

“I know how he feels.” Carolyn was finding it hard to take her eyes off the Thompson, even though she knew it wasn’t loaded. The magazine, a fat drum of battered black steel, still lay on the bed. “But I guess you’ve made your decision.”

Diana smiled sadly. “We really don’t have any choice.”

“There must be something. Somebody we can call.” Carolyn shook her head. “I’m sorry, but attacking Avery’s mansion is just insane.”

“Hm. My new middle name.”

“Face it, Doc. We’re on our own here.” Harrigan put the Thompson down and began rooting through the case. “You know we can’t trust the cops.”

“There must be someone.”

Diana gave a little shrug. “Unless you know of a really dedicated pest-controller, I can’t think who.”

“Anyway,” said Harrigan, “we’re not planning on starting a war. All we need to do is take out Mr. Stone. Go in, find out where Avery keeps it, and finish the damn thing off once and for all.” He lifted a solid-looking revolver out of the case and passed it to Diana. “Here, try that for size.”

Carolyn made an exasperated noise. “Honestly, you two! What will this solve? Just suppose you do manage to get to the monster—Avery and his people aren’t going to let you just walk away.”

“Oh, I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that too much.” Diana raised the revolver in both hands, arms straight, and squinted along the top of the barrel. “Avery’s nothing without Mr. Stone, and he knows it. His masters in the Silver Twilight will drop him like a hot potato if he doesn’t have the monster on his side, and he’ll find keeping his hired muscle on the payroll rather difficult, too.” She lowered the weapon, did something with it that caused it to hinge open, and peered into the cylinder. “Believe me, Carolyn, if we can destroy Mr. Stone and get out of Arkham alive, I’m sure we won’t have to worry about anyone else coming after us.”

Carolyn folded her arms. She felt completely helpless in the face of their conviction. They weren’t going to listen to her. None of the few arguments she could muster would sway them. They were going to march off to their deaths and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

Apart from the thing that scared her most of all. “All right, then. I’m coming with you.”

There was a moment’s silence. She stood there, her back to the open door as if blocking their way, her arms still folded, drawing herself up as tall as she could manage. Which, all things considered, really wasn’t all that tall.

Carolyn was well aware of how ridiculous she must have looked to them. Had they both broken out into laughter she wouldn’t have been surprised.

Neither did. Instead, Diana put down her revolver and crossed the room to her. “Carolyn, that wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“And why not?”

“Sweetie, you haven’t seen these things. You have no idea what they’re like, what they’re capable of.” She smiled that sad smile again. “And I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“She’s right, Doc.” Harrigan wasn’t laughing either. “One way or another, this is going to get messy, and that’s not something you want to be a part of. You’re a smart broad, but you’re no fighter.”

Carolyn’s chin went up. “You’re quite right, Mr. Harrigan. I’m not a fighter. However, I am a doctor.” She looked from him to Diana and back again. “You do want to live through this, don’t you?”

“It had crossed my mind,” smiled Diana.

“Then you need me. Because if either of you gets injured, and you probably will, you’ll need someone to patch you back up again.” She nodded at the case. “You two might be the bee’s knees when it comes to dishing out damage, but can either of you give a morphine injection? Or stitch a wound?”

“I got first-aid training in the army,” Harrigan said, sounding defensive.

“Sure, ten years ago.” Carolyn dropped her chin. Keeping her head up was making her neck hurt. She wasn’t built for it. “Besides, you seriously think I’m going to stay here on my own? With Avery’s goons looking for me?”

Diana turned to Harrigan. “Give her a gun, dear.”

He stared. “Seriously?”

“Yes,” said Diana, her voice very level. “Seriously.”

“Fine,” he snapped. “I guess you’ll want Henry along, too.”

“No,” said Carolyn. “He has to stay here. If things go bad, I want our stories told by someone that people will listen to.”

* * *

Later, while Harrigan went to wake Professor Armitage and tell the old man that they were taking his car, Carolyn sat next to Diana on the bed, toying warily with the pistol he had given her. It was the smallest one he had, and it still felt enormous to her. She hoped she wouldn’t have to fire it. “Diana?”

“Hm?”

“Do you think we can do this?”

“I very much hope so. I’m not sure what’s on Mark’s mind, but I have every intention of leaving Arkham in one piece and putting this whole horrible business behind me.” Her tone darkened. “I…I know I’m not right anymore, Carolyn. But I want to be. And I think, if I don’t have to be afraid all the time, then…”

“You will be?”

“No. But I could fake it well enough to get by.”

Carolyn glanced across at her, and realized she was seeing inside Diana’s armor for the first time since the asylum. “What will you do?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” The terrible smile came back, the walls slamming silently and effortlessly closed once more. “A new life, a new store. Maybe a new name. I’ve always rather liked ‘Alice,’ what do you think?”

“Alice? Like the book?”

“Yes,” said Diana Stanley. “Like the book. I’m Alice, this is Wonderland, and we’re going to kill the caterpillar.”

Chapter Thirteen: Apotheosis

The lights came three hours before dawn. Silent at first, two long, pale beams swinging in unison through the frosted air, narrowing to a point somewhere below the black curve of the hill. Avery watched them brighten and then angle down toward him, past him, searing for a moment through the storage shed window before they slid away, joined now by the distant throaty grumble of the Lincoln’s engine.

A second pair of beams faded up from behind the hill, following the first. Nightingale had brought company.

Avery didn’t move. He stood by the window of the storage shed, quite still, surrounded by the crates and barrels that McCarran’s men had unloaded. He had been standing there for a long time, in the dark. He had watched the trucks drive away empty, and had not moved from the window since.

He didn’t know how long ago that was. He didn’t want to know.

There was a watch in the pocket of his waistcoat, ticking softly against his ribs in mechanical counterpoint to the sheathed insect limb jerking spastically against his new flesh, but Avery left it where it was. If he didn’t know for certain how many minutes of his life had dripped away while he had been standing there at the window, he could still tell himself that it wasn’t many at all. That he had time before the journey began.

In the far distance, though, a sliver of slow light hugged the horizon, purple as a bruise. He would have to leave soon.

Avery took a silver cigarette case from his jacket and flipped the lid open, took out a Camel and a match. As the match sputtered into life it sent the shadow of his cupped hand dancing across the shed walls, a twisted, skittering claw, and the cigarette crackled softly as he drew its hot, dry sweetness down his gullet.

He waved the match out, dragging on the cigarette’s warmth until the tip glowed like a tiny sunrise. He wondered if he would be able to smoke on the other side of the schism. If not, he thought grimly, it was probably a good idea to fill his lungs as much as he was able, while he still had the chance.

If things went badly, or if they went well, it was all the same. He had little enough time to enjoy the physicalities of life.

The two cars pulled up in front of the house, engines rattling to silence. Avery heard their doors opening, slamming, a series of quiet voices as Nightingale dispersed the men he had taken to Arkham with him and the new hires he had brought back. The night’s disasters had cost Avery dearly in terms of manpower, and he would need as many strong arms as he could muster for the coming voyage.

There was a metallic clicking in the dark, the slick whisper of oiled hinges. McCarran had brought his wares in through the roller shutters at the front of the shed, but there was a door which led from it through to the house. Avery saw it open, and the dim silhouette of Nightingale’s head poke through. “Boss? There’s no one on the damn gate.”

“In here, Sam,” he said quietly.

“Wow.” Nightingale slipped in, closing the door behind him. “McCarran was having a closing-down sale?”

“Fifty crates of rye, ten of scotch, ten of gin. A few bottles of brandy and some pretty good cognac, just for personal use.” He took another long drag on the Camel. “Added to what we already had stashed, it makes up a pretty good stock.”

The slender man padded toward him, gazing around at the crates. “You took everything.”

“All he had.”

Nightingale whistled. “You sure you should be smoking in here?”

Avery’s mouth quirked in a half-smile, but even that didn’t last long. A vast soft slab of fear was settling over him, as black and gritty as coal dust, robbing him of all humor, all strength. Ever since he had returned to Spaulding House to find Mr. Stone waiting there from him, it had been on him, constricting his breath.

Mr. Stone had flown back, ahead of the Lincoln, all his agendas already mapped and planned in demented, inhuman detail.

Avery forced the fear back. There was still a lot to organize before he had to bridge the schism. “How many men did you get?”

“Not as many as I’d like. O’Bannion loaned us two, and I picked up Hookie and Cable on the way back. Should I put one of them on the gate?”

Avery shook his head. Right now he didn’t really care if anyone came knocking or not.

He’d lost four men in the woods. Two more had died on the road, and another three were crippled. Nightingale had taken the wounded to St Mary’s Hospital. He knew a doctor there who would sign them in without asking any questions. “O’Bannion’s men. Can you trust them?”

“Neblett’s got a yellow streak a mile wide, but the other one’s pretty solid.”

“They’ll have to do.”

Nightingale found a nearby crate and sat down on it, tense and hunched. “I should have been more careful. I thought Harrigan was just some washed-up doughboy. Never figured him for a one-man army.”

“No, the blame lies with me.” Avery finished the cigarette, almost flicked the butt away before he remembered how much liquor was crated up around him. He dropped it instead, ground it out under his shoe. “Diana Stanley was only there to help him because of my lousy aim.”

“Come on, boss. There’s no way she should have made it out of that river.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Avery turned back to the window. The splinter of purple was still there, edging the curve of Harpers Hill like a peering eye. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It won’t when we’re done. I’ve got a pretty good idea where they’re holed up, that Fern broad, too. We can go in quick and quiet. They won’t even—”

He stopped. Avery had his hand up. “Sorry, old friend. It’ll have to wait. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mr. Stone wants all hands on deck. We’re leaving today.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Nightingale said, “It’s on?”

“It is.”

“Damn.” The slender man stood, jerking reflexively up off the crate as if he could no longer sit still. “Damn.”

“We’ll need some men to guard the house while we’re away. But the rest of us are going through, just as soon as he’s torn a big enough hole.”

Nightingale was running a hand back through his hair, over and over. “Why all the rush? He’s waited this long… Did Harrigan getting away spook him or something?”

“Spook him?” Avery almost laughed. “Come on, Sam. This is Stone we’re talking about. No, he’s just got the Shard back in one piece, so he’s off and running. You know what he’s like.”

“No time like the present, huh?”

“I don’t think he experiences time quite like we do. Ten years, ten seconds…it’s all the same to him.”

Nightingale was looking around the shed again, nodding slightly to himself. “And that’s why you cleaned McCarran out.”

“Now you’re on the trolley.” Avery smiled into the darkness. Sam Nightingale had always been smarter than anyone gave him credit for. “Once we come back, I’m not going to be around for long. Not in a form that’s appropriate for running a business, anyway.”

The other man glanced at him, miming a cutting motion at his own forehead. “The brain thing?”

“I’ll need you to take over, Sam. Run Avery Imports as you see fit. This…” He spread his hands. “This should get you off to a good start.”

“Jesus, boss.” Nightingale was staring at him, his strange, pale eyes glinting in the darkness. “You’re really going to let him do it.”

“It’s not a matter of letting him, Sam. I thought you understood.”

“I do, but—”

“Transition is… It’s everything. I can’t live like this anymore. I need him to free me. After all I’ve done for him, the time I’ve waited…”

“Some reward.”

“Oh, it’s far more than that. All right, maybe that’s how he sees it. And trust me, I wouldn’t be setting foot near the gate if transition wasn’t part of the deal. I’ve read about what’s over there. I don’t mind telling you, the thought of crossing the schism terrifies me.”

“You know something?” Nightingale turned away from him, put his hands into his pockets. “That doesn’t bother me at all. I’ve been to some bad places. In the war, and afterward… I’ve seen things, done things… There’s nothing left that scares me, not in this world or any of the ones he talks about. But this? Ripping your brain out, sticking it in a can…” His shoulders came up slightly, an expression of disgust Avery had never seen him make before. “That makes me pretty damn sick, boss.”

“Try living in this body for ten years, then we’ll talk.” Avery sighed. “I know it horrifies you, Sam, but I’ve gone beyond that. There’s too much of him in me. Everything he did to keep me alive back then, all those changes…” He put a hand to his chest, felt the squirming inside, the pulsing of his new limb. “They’re failing. Breaking down. I’m already more like him than I want to be.”

Nightingale didn’t turn. “It’s not the way I’d go.”

“I know,” Avery told him. “But you’re not a coward.”

* * *

The gate was open when Avery took the elevator down to find Mr. Stone, but it was tiny, unusable. A saucer could have covered it.

Avery circled it warily. It hung soundlessly in the air in front of him, at the center of a domed chamber just off the main laboratory: a flat, vertical disk of pure blackness no wider than his palm, edged in whirling tatters of greyish light. As Avery moved it seemed to follow him, to keep its face always toward his, but he knew that it wasn’t actually turning. Anyone else in the chamber would see it facing them, too.

Watching it made his head ache, his eyes sting. The threads of lights that whipped around its edge looked like shredded flesh underwater, twitched and turned by some noisome current, and the fitful glow it gave off leant the cavern a queasily submarine air. Standing there, in the cold, fluttering dark, Avery found his chest tightening, his lungs burning. Unconsciously, he was holding his breath.

He turned away from the gate, sucking in a lungful of air as he did so, and saw that Mr. Stone was standing at the chamber’s entrance.

He resisted the reflexive urge to curse. Mr. Stone didn’t understand surprise, and would ask him to explain whatever word he used. He had done so, dozens of times in the past, and the creature simply didn’t retain the information. From what Avery could gather, Mr. Stone didn’t remember things in the same way humans did. If it thought something relevant, its recall would be perfect. If not, it was forgotten instantly and completely.

Instead, he gestured back toward the gate. “It’s small.”

“The fissure undergoes a constant geometric extension into phase space.”

“That means nothing to me and you know it,” snapped Avery. “How long until we can go through?”

“Time is immaterial.”

Avery sighed and began to walk out of the chamber. He was in no mood for Mr. Stone’s word games. “Is the Shard back together yet?”

The creature took a few steps back to let him past. “The components are acquired,” it wheezed. “Reconfiguration is incomplete.”

“Well if it’s not, we won’t get far on the other side.”

He stepped out into the laboratory, the hub of Mr. Stone’s complex wheel of caverns and tunnels. It was darker there, light being another of the things Mr. Stone found immaterial. During daylight hours some sunlight tended to filter down from the vertical shaft at the far end of the complex—the disused wellbore through which the creature would enter and leave its chambers—but it was still almost dark outside. He could barely see where to put his feet.

Mr. Stone scuttled past him to stop at one of the laboratory’s dozens of work surfaces: a waist-high cylinder cut from the rock and topped with a burnished disk of metal. It bent, and in the faint light issuing from its pulpy head he could see black fragments arranged there, a dozen or more, fist-sized chunks down to tiny splinters.

It wasn’t the first time he had watched Mr. Stone poring over the jigsawed Shard. This phase of the great project was not the only task it had focused on over the past ten years—the tanks arranged around the walls were horrific testament to that—but it had been a part of the creature’s plans since before fate had driven them together. He could not remember a time when Mr. Stone had not been waiting to rebuild the artifact.

Then again, impatience was not something that troubled Mr. Stone. The creature waited as trees wait.

Avery stepped closer, looking down at the shattered artifact. “Can it be repaired?”

Mr. Stone didn’t reply. Instead, several of its limbs darted out, snatching up the fragments. Avery heard a succession of sharp clicking sounds as pieces of the Shard were pressed together, separated, turned, twisted, assembled again in new configurations, so quickly that he could barely keep track of how many limbs were involved or what they were doing.

He shivered in disgust. It was like seeing a machine at work, not a living thing at all. Even after so long, the immense, unfathomable difference between the Winged Ones and anything even remotely human still unnerved him.

Suddenly, all he wanted to do was leave. “Let me know when you’re finished,” he muttered, knowing there would be no answer.

The Shard came together.

It happened quickly, almost quick enough to miss. If Avery had blinked at that moment, or turned his head, he would not have seen it. He might even have thought, later, that Mr. Stone had solved the puzzle, rather than the fragments suddenly tugging themselves out of its grip and hurtling together, colliding with a gunshot impact and a red glitter of heat.

Avery felt something wash over him, a dry fizzing in the blood, in the bones. The Shard coming back to life.

The puzzle had solved itself. It clattered back onto the metal surface, spinning slowly to a halt. A wisp of smoke curled up from it.

“Reconfiguration,” buzzed Stone. It turned away, already focused on other matters. “It gathers the bearers.”

Avery blinked. The way Stone jumped effortlessly between subjects often left him confused, breathless. “Now?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” He shook himself. “Nightingale found four more men. How many do you need?”

“Many.”

“How many? I need to know who I can spare to guard the mansion. We have enemies, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“Many.”

“Very well. I can take five men, along with Nightingale and myself.”

There was a scuttling blur of motion. Mr. Stone was suddenly rearing in front of him, its faceless head seething with color. “Insufficient.”

“When one travels into hostile territory, old friend, one does so either in overwhelming force or in the smallest possible numbers. And there’s a limit to the Shard’s radius of effect, isn’t there?”

“Insufficient.”

“Insufficient for what?”

Mr. Stone jerked forward, leering close to him, and then darted away. For a moment Avery lost sight of the creature entirely. He stood where he was, puzzled, unsure of what to say. It wasn’t unknown for the eyeless thing to finish a conversation in such a manner.

Then there was a sharp hiss from off to his right, a squeal of escaping steam. He saw vapor jetting out from an apparatus hugging the cavern wall, lit from within by a sickening green light.

The machine was splitting apart, unfolding, leaves of black metal sliding over and away from one another like the petals of some vast and vile flower.

Inside, long racks of glassy cylinders hung dripping.

Avery’s eyes widened. He could see a dozen racks or more, maybe twenty cylinders fixed to each rack. All of them empty, their lids retracted on complex metal hinges. “Dear God, what are those for?”

“Transportation.”

“You want us to haul those across the schism?” For a moment only the logistics of the task filtered through his surprise. It was several seconds before the true implications caught up with him.

“Wait a moment.”

“Time is—”

“Are you planning to trap Feeders in all of these jars?” Avery stepped toward the opened machine, feeling the slick warmth of its vapors on his skin. “How many is that?”

“Many.”

“Just how many oracles does this cult of yours need?”

The creature scampered toward him, past him, clambered like a spider halfway up the machine’s flank and reached chitinous limbs into its depths. Avery saw claws sliding obscenely over the glassy pods, stroking them, caressing, cleaning.

“Prophesy is illusion,” wheezed Mr. Stone. “Hierarchy is immaterial. There is no cult. There is only data. There is only the great project.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Feeders from Within shall go forth among the masses.”

Avery understood then. He understood everything.

He turned on his heel, and ran for the dim outline of the elevator cage.

He never thought he would make it. He was too crippled and sluggish, and Mr. Stone was too fast, too inhumanly agile. But Avery managed to get all the way to the cage, crossing the cavern in one single, lurching sprint. His fingertips actually brushed the icy metal of the handles.

Mr. Stone erupted down from the rocky ceiling in front of him.

He cried out, stumbling backward. The creature was climbing down the cage, inverted, fan-like wings flickering in awful anticipation. Brilliant flashes of color coursed over the convoluted mass of its head as it slithered and clattered toward him.

“Stone, wait. Listen to me.” Avery was backing up, trying to keep his eyes on the approaching creature, but the shadows were too deep. He could only see edges of it—a twitching wing, a claw, a glisten of its tendriled head. “You have to stop this.”

“It is no longer useful in its present form.”

Something hit Avery in the hip. He reached out, felt a cold smoothness, and glanced back to see the metal table, the one he lay on whenever Mr. Stone stilled the pain of his new flesh. A fragment of hope flared in him. There were tools there, sometimes.

He was trying to find something to use as a weapon when Stone lurched out of the dark and grabbed him.

In a heartbeat it had his arms wrenched up and back, and the whipping tendrils of its head were pattering his eyes. He shouted in horror and tried to twist away, tugging in its grip, but it was too strong.

As he struggled, something deep inside him tore free.

He felt it, a parting of tissue from bone, breaking nerve and splitting tendon, and an unspeaking ripping, peeling, hot scarlet pain jagged like a blade of molten iron through his chest and a sudden, squirming flood of slick heat. The sac encasing his new limb had ruptured as he fought, the translucent sheath splitting apart to vomit thick embryonic ichor down his belly.

Avery couldn’t even scream. The birth-pain of that pale, hinged appendage had locked his throat tight, denied his lungs the breath to howl.

Dimly, through the fire of his broken innards, he felt the table at his back. It was folding up around him, extending bright metal restraints that hinged around him, pulling his arms straight, his head up. In seconds he was half sitting, half crucified, and Mr. Stone was scampering around behind him, out of sight.

Light spilled down from above the table.

Avery moaned, awash with pain, all strength gone, his body lost to him. There was blood in his mouth. “Stone. Stop this. Please.”

The creature darted around the edge of the table. “It requires transition.”

“No.”

“Hesitation is immaterial.”

“I’m not ready.” He was crying, wracking sobs guttering up from his ruptured, ruined innards, tears spilling down his face and salting the blood on his lips. “Please, God, no, I’m not ready.”

There was no reply this time. His only answer was the icy touch of Mr. Stone’s razored devices at his scalp, as they began to peel away the layers of him—the hair and skin and bone and the pulsing membranes beneath, slowly and painstakingly and with every sensation vibrantly intact.

Until Phillip Avery was finally set free from the cage of his own flesh.

Chapter Fourteen: The Rabbit Hole

No one spoke on the drive to Harpers Hill.

Harrigan was silent, his hands tight on the wheel, lost in whatever dark thoughts were forcing him onward. Carolyn watched him from the back seat, seeing the tension written across his shoulders, in the corded muscles of his neck. She had felt the car continually speeding up and then slowing, over and over. Harrigan was eager to be among the enemy, itching to find the creature that had caused them all so much woe, and he had to keep checking himself and throttling the professor’s car back to a safe speed.

Diana Stanley seemed content to sit and gaze out of the windows as the streets of Arkham thinned out, gave way to clusters of ancient, sag-roofed houses, then open farmland and trees. She had raided Wilmarth’s kitchen before leaving, sorting through the drawers and cupboards until she had discovered the utensils she required. Now she sat alongside Harrigan and toyed with one of the biggest butcher knives Carolyn had ever seen.

Occasionally she would hum, tunelessly.

Carolyn said nothing to either of them, for the simple reason that she was too frightened to come up with anything remotely relevant. All she could do was perch there in the back seat, alongside the canvas bag of weapons Harrigan had assembled, and sort mechanically through her medical kit. She had been able to find a few useful items in Wilmarth’s apartment, plus a few that she carried with her as a matter of course, and had stuffed them into the small leather satchel that Armitage carried his books in.

She wished she had more. She wished even harder that she wouldn’t have to use any of it.

* * *

Harpers Hill was typical of the uplands that rose wild toward the west of Arkham: part domed, part jagged, a sloped mile from base to summit, ringed by a tangle of thick, jagged woodland that reached halfway up its rounded flanks before attenuating into scrub bushes and long, unkempt grass. A narrow road curved sinuously through the woods and up the hill, unpaved and neglected, at times little more than a dirt track through the trees. Phillip Avery, it seemed, preferred to keep his home as remote and isolated as geography would allow.

Harrigan had stopped the car while the woods were still thick. The three of them had pushed it off the road, concealing it as best they could in the darkness. With the sun hardly troubling the sky the car became instantly invisible, but, if all went to plan, there would be enough light for them to find it again once they made their escape.

Carolyn had no love for the car itself. It was cramped and noisy and old. She had traveled in far better. But leaving it alone there in the woods felt like walking away from her last vestige of safety, like stepping off solid ground and into the abyss. She looked back once, to fix a last image of it in her mind in case she never saw it again, but it was already lost to the night.

* * *

They kept to the edge of the road as they climbed the hill. Under the thorny, interlocking branches the darkness was almost impenetrable. Carolyn followed the dancing beam of Harrigan’s flashlight in a fugue of wordless tension, feeling the cold, sharp air cutting into her skin, trying to look everywhere at once but seeing almost nothing. Somewhere very far behind her the sun was rising, but its efforts at lighting the world were still being easily defeated by the trees.

The revolver was in her coat pocket, bumping her hip. Diana had shown her how to use it, but she wasn’t sure she would be able to if the time ever came. It was too alien to her, its implications to horrifying. She had seen, in her earliest anatomy classes, what even the smallest pistol bullet could do to human flesh. She could not be responsible for such ruin.

For a time, then, her world contracted to this: a narrow, bobbing beam of light in front of her, the rasp of her breath and hammer of her heart, the frozen, rutted track steep and slippery beneath her feet. To freezing air and clouds of breath in front of her face, frosting her spectacles if she puffed too hard. To fear.

And then Harrigan’s flashlight went out.

Carolyn stumbled and froze, arms stretched out into the darkness in front of her. She narrowed her eyes and strained to see.

Up ahead of her, where the slope of Harpers Hill crested and became level ground, something regular reared against a deep indigo haze of sky. A wall, high, spike-topped, a bifurcated slab of shadow stretching away to either side, split where the track went through.

Carolyn saw faint lines hovering in the gap. A wrought-iron gate was set there, much like that which barred the way to Arkham Asylum. Which meant there would be locks and chains, and a gatehouse, probably guarded against intruders.

She peered around, wondering if there might be another way through the wall. A tree close enough to climb, perhaps, or some smaller, less guarded entrance. Going right up to the front gate of Avery’s house seemed like a very swift and certain form of suicide.

A shape darted in front of her, crossing the track and launching itself at the gate. It was Diana. A moment later Harrigan followed her, the Thompson bulking in his hands.

Carolyn gasped and froze, waiting for gunfire.

There wasn’t any. All she heard were footfalls, murmured voices. A long, low squeak of hinges.

She straightened up and trotted forward. “What’s going on?” she hissed.

“There’s a gate,” whispered Harrigan.

Carolyn’s heart felt as though it was trying to beat its way right out of her chest. “I’d guessed that much.”

“Nobody’s home.” Diana was walking back toward them, the butcher knife in her hand. She sounded almost disappointed. “And someone’s been terribly careless.”

Now that she was closer, Carolyn could see what the woman meant. The gate was partially open, the thick chain that would normally have secured the two halves of it hanging free.

She hugged herself. “I don’t like this. Avery isn’t stupid.”

“Not in that way, no.” Diana slipped the knife back into her pocket. “I think you’re right, dear. We’re being invited.”

“Doesn’t make sense.” Harrigan lowered the gun. “If they knew we were coming they could have taken us out way before this. Back in the woods, on the road, anywhere.”

“Maybe they’d rather do it somewhere private?”

“Kind of risky, don’t you…” He trailed off, staring. “Oh, what the hell?”

Diana was striding back to the gate.

Carolyn darted away from Harrigan and ran to catch her up. She almost put a hand on the woman’s arm, but then remembered how she had reacted to being touched back in the apartment. “What are you doing?”

“Finding out if it’s a trap or not.”

“If it is you’ll be killed!”

“Hm. And if we stand around gabbing for much longer, somebody will come and kill us anyway.” Diana pushed the gate a little further open and slipped through. “Wait here.”

Carolyn hissed the woman’s name again, but Diana was already out of sight. There was the sound of a footstep on gravel, then silence.

Harrigan appeared at her shoulder. “Where did she go?”

“I have no idea.” Carolyn sighed, then took a deep breath, and stepped through the open gate. “But I think it’s safe.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Because if there was someone waiting, we’d have heard him scream by now.”

* * *

Harrigan had a pair of binoculars. Crouched in the scrub fifty yards from the mansion, safely away from the gravel track, Carolyn watched him while he lay on his belly in the long grass and used them to look for sentries.

She wrapped her arms around her knees, shivering. The woods below had been thick enough to shelter her from the wind, but up on the crest of Harpers Hill there was no such resistance. She was seriously beginning to wonder if she was more likely to die from hypothermia than from any attack by Avery’s men.

“This is crazy,” whispered Harrigan. “Where is everyone?”

“Is Diana there?”

“Nope.” He passed the binoculars to her. “See for yourself.”

It took her a moment to focus the lenses, but a few twists of the eyepieces had the house full in her vision. The rising dawn light was picking out every edge of it now.

Oddly, Spaulding House was smaller than it had been in her imagination. Her fears had expanded Avery’s lair into some vast gothic pile, all arched windows and threatening dark stone, but what she saw through the binoculars was almost disappointingly ordinary.

The core of it was a two-story manor in classic colonial style—grey-slate roofs perched high over board facings and tall plastered pillars. Carolyn could see that Avery had added additional structures to either wing with little regard for continuity or theme: to the right was some kind of long storage shed, and to the left a cluster of squat, brick-built offices. The additions were probably something to do with the man’s business, or at least its public face, but their effect was to turn the house into a kind of lopsided mutant, unbalanced and jarring.

She scanned the binoculars left and right, searching the entire length of the mansion. A few lights burned in the windows of the main house, although all of the additional structures were dark. There was no one in sight. “This is terrible. What do we do now?”

“You’d rather the place was guarded?”

She lowered the binoculars. “Honestly? Yes. At least we’d know where they were. This just feels like they’re expecting us.”

“I know how you feel, but we’re never going to find out sitting around here.” He rose and picked up the Thompson. The other long gun he had brought, a battered-looking rifle, was slung across his shoulder on a leather strap. “Let’s go.”

He started forward, crouching as he ran. Carolyn got to her feet and followed, a hollow shivering at her core, and scampered across the uneven, unkempt lawn toward the house.

She expected bullets to come whining out of the night at her with every step, but once again she was met with nothing but cold silence. Within thirty seconds she was crouched beneath a window on the mansion’s raised veranda, back pressed hard against the boards, stomach knotted and lungs heaving.

Harrigan watched her from the shadows nearby, an amused half-smile on his lips. “You okay?” he mouthed.

She answered him with a glare and closed her mouth, forcing her breath to slow.

Now that she was closer, she could see that Spaulding House was in a poor state of repair. The white paint was peeling from the boards, rough under her fingertips, the boards of the veranda uneven beneath her heels. The dissolution wasn’t far advanced, as far as Carolyn could see. The neglect was recent, but progressing.

For the past few months, she guessed, Phillip Avery’s attentions had not been on his home.

Harrigan was getting up, leaning around a window frame to peer sideways through the glass. She saw him frown and shake his head slightly. Carolyn was beginning to wonder if the entire building was unoccupied when there was a heavy, hollow impact from inside the front door. The click of a lock.

She heard Harrigan curse, saw him step back with the Thompson at his hip. Before she knew it she had reached into her pocket and dragged the revolver out into the air as the door swung open.

The gun barrel, vibrating like a plucked string, came up to center directly on Diana Stanley’s forehead.

The woman grinned down at her, then put a finger to her lips and vanished back inside the house. Carolyn closed her eyes for a moment, let the gun drop, the breath she had been holding hissing out from between her clenched teeth. Then she scrambled up and followed Diana inside.

The door opened onto a long hall or lobby, the floor tiled in marble, the pale walls rising almost to the roof. Carolyn saw a double stairway curving up to a railed balcony, and closed doors leading off in every direction. Two vast chandeliers hung from the high ceiling, but their bulbs were dark. The hall’s only light came from a series of frosted glass uplighters ranged along the walls.

Behind her, Harrigan stepped in and pulled the door closed. “Anyone?” he whispered.

“Not a soul.” Diana shook her head. “But I’ve found something rather fun. Come and see.”

She padded off toward the stairs. Carolyn threw a glance at Harrigan. He shrugged helplessly and went after Diana.

Carolyn took one more look around, trying to spot any of the doors opening, then trotted after Harrigan to where Diana now stood. The woman had paused behind the right-hand stairway in front of a tall, rectangular metal cage set into the wall. There were folding barriers to either side of it, hinged arrangements of black steel and brass handles, and a single enclosed bulb threw yellow light down onto plain wooden flooring.

“Oh,” she said.

Harrigan was looking into the cage, shaking his head. “I don’t get it.”

“Avery has trouble walking, doesn’t he?” Carolyn realized she was still holding the pistol, but didn’t feel quite like putting it back into her pocket just yet. “It makes sense that he’d have something like this.”

“That’s what I mean. What’s the big deal about an elevator?”

Diana rolled her eyes. “The big deal, my dears, is that this elevator only goes down.”

“What?” Carolyn stepped back, looking up above the cage. The wall there terminated before it reached the upper floor. Above it, she saw exposed machinery, pulleys and motors. “Why would he build something like that?”

“Depends what he’s keeping under the floor.”

Suddenly the floor under Carolyn’s feet felt eggshell-thin. The Winged Ones were miners, she remembered, burrowers, hollowing out caverns in the hills of Vermont, the mountains of Tibet. “Ah.”

“Fine,” growled Harrigan. “But no way are all three of us going down in this thing at once.”

“Oh no, you don’t,” Carolyn hissed. “We can’t split up.”

“Come on, Doc. All three of us in that cage, with Christ-knows-what waiting for us at the bottom?”

“That’s the problem, Mr. Harrigan. Three of us. Which means there’s no way we can split up without somebody being left on their own.” She folded her arms. “And something bad always happens to the one that gets left alone.”

* * *

The elevator rattled unnervingly as it descended. Carolyn spent the short journey pressed tight against the side of the cage, trying to present as small a target as possible to anyone who might be waiting below. Harrigan did the same in mirror-image. Diana stood directly under the bulb, playing with her knife and occasionally throwing amused glances at the pair of them.

There was no one waiting when the elevator stopped.

“Hm.” Diana was squinting downward, at the narrow gap between the floor of the cage and the inside of the elevator shaft. “I’m sure it was going to go farther down than this.”

“There’s only one button,” Carolyn replied. Through the heavy mesh of the cage door she could see what looked like a long, arched vault stretching away from her. Dim grey light filtered toward her from the far end, picking out the edges of dry brick walls, the black loops of side tunnels to the left and right, a litter of splintered planks and spars on the floor.

Harrigan pulled the doors open and stepped out of the elevator, beginning to walk slowly toward the light. Carolyn heard his boots crunching on grit.

“What the hell’s this?” he muttered.

“Wine cellar,” Diana replied. She moved to the side of the vault, bending slightly under its curve. “Back before somebody decided wine was so bad for us.”

Carolyn paced past them both. There was a breeze blowing in her face, very softly, bearing a cold dampness that spoke of outside. It was coming from the end of the tunnel, where the light shone. “I think there’s a way out at this end.”

“No sign of Stone, though.” Harrigan had picked up a piece of wood, probably part of an old wine rack. He tossed it angrily away. “Damn it. There’s nothing here.”

“Wait,” said Diana.

“Damn waiting. This is a waste of time!”

“Will you be quiet?” she snapped. “I can hear voices!”

Carolyn had turned to face them. She took one more step backward, along the tunnel, and as she did light flared under her.

Scarlet threads pulsed to life in the floor. For a heartbeat it was as if the soiled stone beneath her was formed of dark glass, a grid of lava springing to life below it. A network of red lines appeared and grew searingly bright, etching the vast twisted symbol they described into Carolyn’s dark-adapted eyes, then faded and vanished as if they had never existed.

In their wake, the air shivered, turned greasy and warm.

“Jesus,” gasped Harrigan. “What was that?”

Diana had the knife in one hand and her pistol in the other. Her entire demeanor had changed: she was no longer insolent and amused, but tense and balanced, ready to fight. The sight of her chilled Carolyn worse than the symbol in the floor had done. “Nothing good.”

Harrigan had the Thompson up, its barrel nosing for a target. “What were those lights?”

Dust was puffing out from the side tunnels. Carolyn could see fragments pushed out from them across the floor: scraps of wood, pebbles, insect shells, forced into the main vault by some growing and reeking wind.

A sound was rising, a whispering, directionless rushing, like the approaching of a great wave.

“I think we should get back in the elevator,” said Carolyn.

She saw Diana turn away, then suddenly jump back. Something was skittering out of the furthest side tunnel toward her, hand-sized, a squealing mass of grey fur and claws. It darted past Diana, heading for the opposite tunnel, but then checked itself halfway there, tumbling over in its haste before righting itself and scampering toward Carolyn.

Behind it, more followed.

“Just damn rats,” called Harrigan, his voice raised above the increasing sea sound.

Carolyn watched the rodent run past. “Yuck.”

“Just keep still, they won’t hurt you.”

As he spoke, the wave broke behind him. A seething, hissing mass of pallid tissue vomited out into the wine cellar.

Harrigan cursed and scrambled back from it. The mass was waist-high, glistening, every part of it in ceaseless, writhing motion. It was pouring from the tunnel mouth, heaving out in vile, spasmodic gouts, spilling like heaped slime out over the stone floor between him and the elevator. He swung the Thompson around, and fired.

A deafening clatter ripped out into the tunnel, echoing painfully from brick and stone. The muzzle flashes lit the vault up like staccato lightning. In their glare Carolyn saw brass casings whirling away, fragments of the mass spinning into the air.

Each fragment was a fat, squirming thing, a yard-long tube of wet, translucent flesh, spattering apart under the impact of the Thompson’s bullets. An ocean of gigantic maggots was surging toward them.

The slower rats had already been overwhelmed, swamped, the worms that had fallen on them slick with crimson in the instant before the thousands above them rolled over and on. Carolyn heard Diana cry out, saw the woman stagger back with one of the awful things attached to her shoulder. She ran to her, ducking reflexively as Harrigan sent another burst of lead into the swarm, and swept the awful thing free with the barrel of her pistol.

It came away with a scarlet disk of skin in its jaws. Carolyn pulled Diana back behind her and stamped down on the squealing maggot, as hard as she could. She felt it resist her for a moment, a party balloon full of jerking, convulsing jelly, then it burst, the slick heat of its innards washing over her foot.

Sickened, she stumbled back. “God, what are they?”

“Dhole larvae,” grated Diana. One of the things had squirmed ahead of the swarm’s leading edge. She swept her knife out, sent its guts spattering over the wall. “That cretin Avery must have set up a summoning circle down here.”

Harrigan was backing past them. “There’s too many.”

“They’re still young. They won’t live long, not in this world.”

“How long?”

They had already been forced halfway along the vault. Diana glanced back to judge the distance. “Long enough, unfortunately.”

Carolyn tugged at her arm. “Come on, you two! Run!”

Diana needed no more encouragement. She was already turning away from the chittering slick of larvae. Carolyn saw Harrigan level the gun at the mass again, but then he must have realized the futility of it. He spat a curse and spun, running toward the light.

She started a fraction after he did, but his leg was not yet healed, and Diana kept looking back. Carolyn overtook both of them, disgust at the worm pile lending her speed. She reached the light first and turned back to make sure that her companions were still ahead of the mass.

Her foot went back, into empty space.

She fell, too shocked to scream, tipping forward onto hands and knees, her body crashing onto the floor. There was nothing behind her. No exit, no floor. She slipped back, her momentum carrying her.

“Stop!” she yelled. “Don’t—”

What little grip she had failed. She slid backward off the edge, hands scraping uselessly at gritty stone. The pistol whirled away from her.

Her foot hit something. She jammed her shoe into it as hard as she could, felt it sag slightly under her weight. She was most of the way off the edge now, resting on her elbows, but there wasn’t enough strength left in her arms to pull herself up. The night’s fears had stolen it from her.

Diana was at the edge, reaching down. “Take my hand.”

“I can’t.” If she took her weight off either arm she would fall. Desperately, Carolyn looked over her shoulder slightly. She was hanging on the edge of an open shaft of rough stone, a rough brick chimney that stretched vertically above and below her. Upward she could see a disk of sky, heartbreakingly out of reach. Below her, darkness.

The walls of the chimney were ragged, stones and spars of rotted wood jutting from it. Her foot must have been on one such obstruction.

Diana was on her knees. Her fingers wrapped around Carolyn’s wrist. “Yes, you can.”

Harrigan’s face appeared at the edge. He looked up, down, appraising the situation instantly. “They’re almost on us.”

“I know.” Diana’s teeth were gritted, Carolyn’s weight dragging on her bitten shoulder. Past her, in the darkness of the vault, the squealing of the larvae swarm was growing louder.

“Climb up,” Carolyn gasped.

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Diana, just climb up the side! You’ll be safe until they—”

The obstruction under her foot gave way.

Carolyn fell. Diana’s grip didn’t slow her for an instant. She scraped down the jagged rock wall, hands clawing as the razored stone ripped past her. An outcropping slammed into her right foot, buckling her leg, and she dropped past it.

Caught it in both hands.

The stop almost took her arms off. She shouted, but managed to hang there, swinging from her fingertips. She was small, light. She could hold on.

She couldn’t hold on. Her grip was already giving way.

Carolyn looked up, desperate for one last glimpse of the sky before the abyss took her. Dimly, far above her own outstretched arms, she could see two figures clambering out onto the inside wall of the chimney.

And past them, a tipping waterfall of squirming maggots.

She closed her eyes and ducked her head. The first larva struck her shoulder, taking her left hand off the rock. The second slapped into her head.

Carolyn tipped despairingly backward into empty space. She heard Diana cry out, and tried to close her eyes, but her body had its own will now. All she could do was reach up toward that vanishing circle of sky, as if to take it in her hands and carry it down with her into the dark.

The ground sledged with unspeakable force into her back.

It hammered the air out of her lungs, the sight from her eyes. She bounced, fell back again, lay sprawled with every bone singing with shock. Then the pain whirled up inside her, from her spine to her gut to every extremity, and she folded up, rolled over on her side. If there had been breath in her, she would have screamed.

Larvae were falling past her, fleshy bodies splashing open on the hard stone.

She sucked a breath in and rolled dizzily onto her knees. Up above her, she caught another glimpse of that inviting sky, but it was worryingly far away, and no longer a circle. Its edges roiled. A moment later it was obscured by a black, squirming rain.

Carolyn staggered up, saw a narrow opening gaping ahead of her, and lurched through it. She barely made it under the sheltering overhang before the swarm came down behind her in a wet slapping explosion, an endless succession of squealing, splattering impacts.

The worms burst as they hit. Carolyn crawled further into the opening, feeling their stinking innards spraying her back.

Her medical kit was gone, buried under the larvae, the pistol too. Thankfully her spectacles had stayed on, which she regarded as a quite amazing stroke of luck. After all, she had fallen about fifty feet in total. If she had done it all at once she would be dead, but luckily there had been enough obstructions for her to stage her descent, to slow herself between each drop.

She was in extreme pain, though. If she survived the coming day, she guessed, she would end it as a single vast bruise from head to heel.

The worms were still falling. She could hear them, impacts muffled by the pile of their burst and oozing kin. The opening she had dived into was narrow, waist-high at most, and her way back was already completely blocked. The mass of larvae was slithering in after her, forcing her to crawl deeper into the rock on her hands and knees or be swamped.

She was wondering how much space she had left when she saw light ahead.

It was distant, a glittering disk, faint and fluttering. But to Carolyn it was everything. It meant that the space she had flung herself into was not just a cavity in the shaft wall, but a tunnel. A circular passageway, drilled horizontally out from the base of the shaft.

Carolyn began to scramble toward the light, trying not to imagine the untold weight of hillside above her back.

It probably lasted no more than a minute, but her crawl along the tunnel seemed to take forever. There was no room to stand upright, or even to kneel; no space to spread her arms to try and ease the pains in her shoulders and back. All she could do was to scuffle along on all fours, wincing, desperately hoping the tube wouldn’t narrow before its end.

The walls of the passage felt strange under her hands and knees. Unlike the brick vaults above her, this tunnel was one with the surrounding rock, a cylindrical tube burrowed horizontally through the deep foundations of Harpers Hill. Carolyn was no expert on mining techniques, but just from the texture of the tunnel against her skin she could tell that it hadn’t been drilled by any conventional means.

The impression that entered her mind was that the tunnel had been chewed out, but she dismissed that hastily. She had enough to frighten her already. Instead she emptied her mind, and crawled on as fast as her cramped position would allow, all her attentions focused on the flickering gleam ahead.

* * *

Finally, with her shoulder muscles burning and her hands and knees raw, she reached the end.

Carolyn had slowed her pace as the disk of light grew. Although she was eager to be free from the tunnel’s confines she still had no idea what might lie at its far end—for all she knew, Mr. Stone itself could be squatting implacably at the mouth of the tube, awaiting her arrival. So she slowed her pace and her breathing, drew her knees up under her, and crawled as slowly and carefully as she could to the end of the passage.

She crouched at the threshold for a short time, trying to make sense of the space that had opened in front of her.

It felt big after the narrowness of the tunnel, its air cool, its ceiling high and domed. Carolyn’s impression was of a roughly circular space many yards across, but the shadows were so dense she couldn’t be sure. The light she had seen from within the tunnel was far more diffuse than she had expected—no more than a few spots of greenish glow, as faint and insubstantial as phosphorescence.

The flickering component of it was concentrated within a circular doorway to her right—a sporadic, sparking glare that camouflaged more than it revealed.

Carolyn didn’t like the look of that silvery stutter at all. It tugged at her nerves in a way that was fundamentally unpleasant. She shuddered as she eased herself down from the tunnel mouth and onto the floor.

Around her, clustered forms loomed from the shadows. There were numerous shapes within the cavern: furniture, or maybe machinery, and gleaming forms around its extents that reflected the fluttering glare like glass. Carolyn saw low benches, a peculiar cruciform structure rising from the center of the chamber, loops of fat hanging cable connecting everything. The entire place was a cluttered, confusing mass of outlines. No matter how long she looked, it meant nothing to her.

It was, however, unoccupied. She began to make her way across the littered floor, as carefully and silently as she could.

With her eyes well adapted to the darkness she could see enough to make her way around, as long as she kept her arms outstretched to let touch supplement her vision. She skirted the tall metal shape in the center of the cavern, vaguely aware of an ugly, coppery smell issuing from it as she passed by, and then saw something on the far side of the chamber that almost made her shout for joy.

There was a rectangular metal cage set into the wall a few yards from her, black steel and polished brass, its hinged gates closed.

It took a conscious effort not to give voice to her relief. Even in the darkness and the confusion of her fall, Carolyn retained enough of her sense of place to know that Diana had been right: this was an extension of the same elevator shaft she had already traveled. Why the cage had only taken the three of them halfway down she couldn’t guess, but that didn’t matter. All she had to do now was summon it, and let it lift her back into the light.

She reached out and felt for the control, glancing back over her shoulder to make sure she was still alone.

There was a gun pointed at her face.

On any normal day, Carolyn would have frozen at the sight of the weapon. Perhaps she would have raised her hands, shrunk a little lower to appear less threatening, done any one of a dozen calming, submissive things to increase her chances of persuading the gunman to keep his finger off the trigger.

It was not a normal day. Carolyn was very afraid, utterly on edge, and physically off balance. Before she knew what she was doing she had shouted wordlessly and lashed out.

Her flailing hand caught the barrel and slapped it aside. The gun fired followed by a white flash and a flat deafening clap of sound, a ricochet whine off the elevator cage. Carolyn was already diving back past the gunman, shoving past him. She felt the passage of his free hand as he grabbed at her, but she scrambled away, fetching up against the metal structure she had skirted before.

In response to the contact, a bluish light snapped on above it, painfully bright and utterly unforgiving.

What she had seen from behind and failed to recognize was, from the front, a kind of chair, cast from glittering metal and angled like the seat on which a dental patient might struggle and scream. And it was occupied: a man sat before Carolyn, held tightly upright by a network of spidery steel claws, his arms spread wide as if to embrace her.

He was smartly dressed, in a pale grey suit and white collared shirt. He wore small round spectacles with darkened lenses, and a neat pencil mustache covered his twisted upper lip. Someone had taken the top of his head off.

There was no blood, no damage. Just a perfectly neat dissection above the eyebrows, stretching around over his ears in a single, clean line. The entire upper half of the man’s skull had been lifted away, scalp and bone and dura tidily excised, and the contents removed.

His head gaped at the cavern roof, an empty cup.

Carolyn was close to the chair, her hands on it, her face very near to that of the held man. She was close enough to see the extent of his changing in perfect detail, and it was a horror too much. A scream tore up out of her. She staggered back, hands to her mouth.

The gunman stepped toward her. She saw his shadow, the shape of him from the corner of her eye, but her gaze was still fixed on the abomination in front of her. She never even saw the gun as it slammed with sickening force into the side of her skull.

The impact dropped her, cutting her scream dead. She didn’t even properly feel the blow, just a flash of searing scarlet heat behind her right ear and her legs went from under her. She collapsed onto her knees, head lolling back. The cavern spun around her. Through a spark-shot cloud of pain she saw the gun barrel again, aimed steady and true at her forehead.

“Where are the other two?” The gunman’s voice was very calm. He might have been asking her about the weather.

Carolyn blinked up at him. In the light from the metal chair she could see he was slim, rather slight, dark hair receding over a sharp, narrow skull. Probably the one Harrigan had called Nightingale. By all accounts, a very dangerous man indeed.

He’d spot a lie, and punish her for it.

Carolyn had no intention of lying. She said nothing, just glared up at him past the barrel.

The gunman sighed. “Dr. Fern, I’m on the clock here. So I’m going to give you one more chance. Tell me where Harrigan and Stanley are, or I’ll empty that pretty head of yours all over this floor.”

The nature of his threat set her swaying, but she held her balance. “Go to hell.”

He smiled thinly. “Funny you should say that.”

“Why?”

“Guess you’ll die never knowing.”

She was close enough to see his finger tighten, his knuckle whiten slightly.

Chapter Fifteen: The Road to Hell

“Sam. Wait.”

The voice had issued from the shadows. It was strange; very calm and flat, slightly metallic. But at the sound of it, the gunman froze.

He tilted his head very slightly, his eyes still fixed on Carolyn over the gun barrel. “Boss, you know who this is?”

“Of course.”

“She’s trouble. It’s best if she’s gone.”

“Maybe. But she might have her uses where we’re going.”

Nightingale lowered the gun, glancing back to where the speaker must have been standing. “Seriously?”

“She’s no threat now. Bring her over. I’m afraid my eyesight isn’t what it once was.”

“Okay, boss. Whatever you say.” The gunman reached down, took Carolyn’s arm, and pulled her, not at all roughly, to her feet. “Up you get, kid.”

The cavern tilted under her for a few moments, then steadied. It seemed Nightingale had known exactly how hard to hit her and where; a skill born, she could only assume, of much practice.

What worried Carolyn even more than the man’s talent for wounding was his level of control. He hadn’t hit her out of anger or a desire to do harm, but simply as the quickest way of putting her on her knees. And when that job was done he appeared to show her no malice at all. If she had to make a snap diagnosis, she would call him a sociopath—utterly unconcerned about the effects his actions had on others, incapable of empathy. But one who held his emotions in constant check.

That made him more deadly than the most violent madman. Nightingale could not be goaded or appealed to or bargained with. He would simply do as he wished, without pleasure or remorse. Carolyn was careful not to resist as he led her, his hand still locked around her upper arm, toward the source of the new voice.

He took her across the chamber, supporting her once when she stumbled over a cable, his own footsteps unhurried and perfectly placed. When they reached the far wall he stopped her and then stepped back, taking up position a couple of paces behind. The gun would be on her now, she had no doubt.

Carolyn frowned. There was no one in sight. Nightingale had taken her to stand before a rack of what looked like camera equipment. “Ah, hello?”

“Hello, Dr. Fern. My name is Phillip Avery.”

Carolyn started. The voice had issued from the rack in front of her. She bent to look closer.

What she had first taken to be a camera was, on closer inspection, something much more complex. It was an open frame of machinery, a tight assemblage of metal coils and crystal and greenish glass. Like a camera it included a lens in a cylindrical housing, but below that was a perforated speaker grille, and a fungal cluster of tiny, trumpet-shaped horns.

As Carolyn stared, the lens whirred and turned, focusing on her. “Perhaps you could step back a little, Doctor. All I can see are pores.”

The voice was coming from the speaker grille, and its owner must have been observing her through the lens. Carolyn moved back slightly, noting how the frame was attached to a fat drum of dull grey metal by three long, flexible cables. A battery, she decided.

It was an impressive machine, a complicated fusion of movie camera and telephone. She wondered how far away Avery sat, watching the world through its glass eye. “That’s very clever, sir. Where are you?”

“I’m directly in front of you, Doctor. I would have thought that was obvious.”

Carolyn peered around the frame, to see if a telephone cable reached back from it into the wall. “No, I mean, where are you really?”

“Perhaps I should be more specific. All of me that matters is here. There’s some left on the chair behind you, but that’s just meat. I don’t want it anymore.”

The words meant nothing. Carolyn couldn’t see any wires coming from the frame, so she turned to the battery case. The connection had to be there. She reached out, turned the cylinder slightly, but again she was disappointed. There was no wire. The machine rested alone on its rack, unconnected to the world.

All she saw at the back of the cylinder was a circular window, a curve of thick glass a few inches across. And inside, lit by a soft green glow, a lump of matter the size of her bunched fists, suspended in a clear bubbly gel and surrounded by thin wires.

The object was unmistakable. Carolyn had seen such things before, in similar containers. But they had been mere exhibits, dead matter to be pried apart in anatomy lessons. This mass of grey convolutions was upright, pulsing faintly within its gel, pierced a hundred times over by a hair-fine network of electrodes. It was alive.

All of me that matters is here.

Suddenly the ground under Carolyn’s feet didn’t seem very steady anymore. A swooping wave of nausea washed up from her belly to the back of her throat. She almost stumbled against the rack.

“Fern.” Nightingale’s voice was pure warning.

“Oh, dear God,” she gasped.

A jerky buzzing came from the machine. Laughter, or what passes for laughter when there are no vocal cords to spasm, no lungs to push air. “Poor little Carolyn, this has been a day of surprises, hasn’t it?”

“That’s…” Carolyn bit down on the word. She could no longer consider anything impossible. Then again, the feat was far beyond any human surgeon, the technologies required to keep a human brain alive outside its body unthinkable. “Mr. Stone did this.”

“Obviously.”

“Boy.” She straightened. “You must have really pissed him off.”

Again, the juddering buzz of laughter. “On the contrary, Dr. Fern, he gave me what I’ve craved for ten years. Oh, there was a little hesitation at the end, a few minutes of struggling. Even a body as ravaged as mine fights to retain that last connection. But now it’s done, you have no idea how much better I feel.” The flat voice sounded almost smug. “You should try it.”

Distantly, somewhere high above her, Carolyn heard great motors whine into life.

The lens turned slightly. “Sam?”

“Just the elevator.” Nightingale appeared at her side, checking his wristwatch. “We gotta go.”

“Of course, forgive me. Time doesn’t seem as pressing with no heartbeat to measure it by.” The lens turned back to Carolyn. “Now, Doctor. You’ll see there is a handle set into the top of my cylinder. Would you lift it off the shelf, please?”

“Woah, hold on, boss.” Nightingale shook his head. “That’s my job.”

“I think, given where we’re off to, I’d prefer you to keep your hands free.” Despite the metal flatness of the voice, Carolyn could hear a hint of amusement in it. “Dr. Fern? I don’t think you’ll find it heavy.”

The thought of picking up the machine and its contents was sickening, but Carolyn knew she really had no choice. Nightingale appeared fiercely loyal to his employer, even in this state. Refusal would lead to another beating, or worse.

She lifted the cylinder and pulled it free of the rack.

“Careful,” said Nightingale quietly. “Drop that and I’ll drop you.”

The lens turned slightly. “Don’t worry, Sam, I’m well protected. This thing’s built to fly between the stars.”

“It had better be.” Nightingale gestured toward the frame. “Now that.”

She complied, lifting the frame in her other hand, letting the cables between it and the battery hang in front of her. As Avery’s disembodied voice had suggested, neither piece of equipment was all that weighty, but holding them both felt awkward. “Where am I taking these?”

The gunman gestured ahead of Carolyn, toward the circular doorway and its ugly, flickering light show. “There.”

She began to walk, carefully planting her feet to avoid another stumble. She didn’t want to know how Nightingale would react if she tripped. Thankfully she only had to walk a few yards to the doorway.

Through it, surrounded by whipping, whirling filaments of fitful light, a disk of pure nighttime hung impossibly in the chill air.

Carolyn jolted to a halt, eyes wide. “What…what is that?”

“A gate,” said Avery’s device. “A way to step from this world to another.”

“I don’t understand.”

“To be honest, neither do I.” A note of displeasure had crept into that flattened voice. “Mr. Stone talks about fracture points, tiny rips in the fabric of the world, about finding a naturally occurring weak spot in the schism and pulling it wide, but it’s all Greek to me.”

The disk was wide, two yards across or more. Big enough to walk into, if what Avery had said was true. “Is this why he needed the Shard of Panestes? To do this?”

“You have been doing your homework.” She couldn’t be sure if the voice sounded disapproving or impressed. “But no, opening the gate is a very different process. He needs the Shard to make sure we’re not instantly devoured on the other side.”

Nightingale moved closer. “It won’t stay open forever, kid.”

Carolyn was recoiling from the disc. The blatant impossibility of it, the organic squirming of the threads at its rim, the pure darkness at its core all conspired to repel her utterly. “That’s a good thing.”

“Not for you.” He nudged her. “Get a wiggle on, will ya?”

Carrying a talking brain was one thing. Voluntarily stepping through a hole in the air was quite another. She shook her head vigorously. “You have to be joking.”

“Oh dear.” Avery whispered out a tinny sigh. “I was hoping you would at least be a little curious, but it appears I overestimated you. Sam?”

She felt Nightingale step up behind her, and in a moment his arms were wrapped around hers. She barely had time to yelp before he had her up off her feet, lifting her with very little effort from the stone floor.

Just before he carried her, struggling, through the gate she heard a metallic banging from the cavern behind her, a dying whine of motors rolling to silence. The elevator cage had finally reached her. Nice try, she thought sourly. But a little late.

Carolyn was mentally cursing it as she was hauled out of the world.

* * *

The journey was swifter than she had been expecting. It took no more time for Nightingale to lift her through this gate between worlds than it would to step through a door. There was an instant of rushing, like a blast of freezing wind that forced her eyes shut, a sense of vertiginous whirling. And then Nightingale set her unceremoniously back on her feet.

She was suddenly very cold.

Light coursed over her eyelids. She opened her eyes, and found a huddled knot of men aiming flashlights at her.

Carolyn looked wildly around, shivering in the chill. The curved walls of the cavern had vanished, replaced by open vaults of impenetrable darkness. Beneath her feet a smooth, flat plane of black stone reflected the sparking glare of the gate at her back, like a glassy road. There was nothing above her. No roof, no stars, no sky. The icy darkness soared away forever.

There was a sound all around her—a faint rushing, the constant whispering sibilance of a million drops of water inching down a million stalactites.

Nightingale let her go and stepped aside. “Everything okay, boys?”

His voice no longer echoed. The words just died in the flat, hissing air.

There was a murmur of assent from the men. Carolyn counted about eight of them, bundled in coats and gloves against the cold. Some carried flashlights, while others clutched guns to their chests like infants, or totems. Their flashlight beams made it hard for her to see their faces in detail, but none of them looked exactly happy.

“Who’s the broad?” someone called out.

“This is Carolyn Fern,” said Nightingale. He grinned. “A couple of you might remember her.”

“Yeah, I remember her just fine.” The man who had spoken was short, wide across the shoulders, his cap pulled down tight and his short jacket buttoned up to his chin. Harrigan had been right about her attackers being released early—Carolyn recognized him as the man she had knocked down the library stairs. “Stupid bitch. Why’d you bring her?”

“Avery’s orders. And he wants her in one piece for now, so let’s make sure she doesn’t come to any harm. All right?”

“For now?” said Carolyn.

“We’ve got a ways to go,” Nightingale muttered. “Anything could happen.”

She was about to answer when the knot of men began to scramble apart. Carolyn saw a hunched figure, draped in a plain cowled robe, move fluidly toward her; the rest of the men spread to let him through, almost stumbling in their haste. They didn’t want to be near him.

Instinctively, she stepped back, but Nightingale was too close. He grabbed her upper arm again and held her in place as the new arrival stopped before her.

“It introduces an instability.”

The voice was a wheezing croak, buzzing and vile, a whisper in the darkness. A whimper of horror escaped Carolyn’s lips.

“This is Dr. Fern,” Nightingale replied. His voice was thick with disgust, but there was a note of defiance to it. “She’s been looking for you.”

Under the cowl, colors whirled across a pulpy, fungal surface that looked like worm-riddled brain. “Identity is immaterial. There is only the great project. It must not threaten the harvest.”

“She won’t.”

This time there was no answer, except for a dry, leathery rustling as Mr. Stone drew closer. Carolyn squirmed in Nightingale’s grip, but with her arm held and the two parts of Avery’s device in her hands, she could do nothing as the creature’s squirming tendrils reached out to brush her face.

Then it was gone, jolting away and scuttling back through the crowd of men.

Nightingale had obviously taken Mr. Stone’s dismissal of her as a signal. He freed her arm and nudged her forward. “Off you go, kid. And be careful. Wouldn’t want you to trip over and break something.”

Carolyn nodded silently and began to make her way forward, very much aware of just how many people were watching her walk, and how little warmth there was in their stares. Even Nightingale’s words, caring on the surface, were no more than a blatant threat. It wasn’t bones he was concerned she might break.

Behind her, a single flashlight clicked on and sent its beam out into the dark. “All right, boys. Let’s get this done.”

The men turned away, their own flashlights dying as they switched them out and stuffed them into pockets. Weapons were slung. A few yards away, long racks were lying on the ground: weird constructions, like metal ladders with fat glassy bulbs set between their rungs. As the men began to haul the racks up, she saw that the bulbs were containers, open-lidded jars, each the size of a human head.

“With your knees, fellers,” called Nightingale. “Not your backs.”

The racks must have been heavy: the men lifted them with curses and grunts of effort, pairing up to bear the weight over their shoulders, one ahead, one behind. After all the bizarre technologies Carolyn had witnessed recently there was something pitifully primitive about the sight. It was like watching the men pantomime the actions of some lost jungle tribe, or a team of hunting cavemen.

They waited as she passed by. When she got close to Mr. Stone she felt the touch of Nightingale’s hand on her shoulder. He must have been behind her the whole way, and she hadn’t heard him.

She stopped, saw the beam of his flashlight scan along that obsidian highway, illuminating nothing but unbroken smoothness. “Looks clear. Okay, boys, follow the light. And stay close to Mr. Stone. Trust me, there’s some nasty critters down here, worse than you’ve seen, and he’s the only one who can keep us from being chewed up.”

* * *

Slowly, awkwardly, the group began to move on through the darkness, following the cone of Nightingale’s flashlight. There was nothing else for them to see, nothing to aim for or judge distances by. The air around them remained unnaturally still, the surface under their feet smooth and unbroken. The only sound, other than their hushed voices and muffled footfalls, was the endless rushing of faraway water.

It was like passing through an endless tomb. Walking, yet buried alive.

Carolyn’s feet were steady on the hard road, but inside she was reeling. Just keeping her wits together was a physical effort. She was untethered, cut free from everything she had believed to be true about the world, flung into limitless, terrifying space without help or hope of rescue. She walked on alien ground, surrounded by monsters and murderers.

Before her trip through the gate she had been able to sustain a fragment of disbelief, like a candle in dark halls: a small still voice to tell her that no, there could not really be a demon from the stars skulking around New England. That the entire affair was a complicated series of delusions and coincidences, of misinterpretations and blatant lies. That legends, no matter how pervasive, seldom turn out to be true.

Now the door to that mental sanctuary was closed forever. The proof was all around her, undeniable and terrifyingly real. Somehow, by no means she could even comprehend, simply stepping into Avery’s whirling gateway had flung her across gulfs of space.

Even before she had opened her eyes, Carolyn had known that she was gone from the world. The air around her felt wrong somehow—thin and lifeless, utterly still. There was a smell to it, the faint but pervasive mustiness of damp rock, ancient and unnatural, and it was cold, colder even than the chill air of Mr. Stone’s cavern. Carolyn was glad that she still had her coat on, even if it was stained and soiled with larvae guts.

But more than that was the strangeness she felt here, the deep, unscratchable itch, the nagging wrongness written into her bones. It was as though there had been a compass in her, hidden and unknown yet totally fundamental to her sense of the world, and now that compass no longer had a north to point at.

Of all the things Carolyn Fern had to frighten her, that feeling was without doubt the worst. More than anything else, it had stilled her doubts. By some unimaginable mechanism she had been sent elsewhere, and all the legends were true.

* * *

They walked in silence. Either Avery had chosen not to speak since she had brought him through the gate, or the journey had somehow robbed him of the ability. Carolyn didn’t mind which. The less she was reminded of what she carried, the better.

Nightingale, too, was saying nothing. He prowled on wordlessly, swinging the flashlight back and forward across the road’s width. Occasionally he would bring it up, in response to some slight sound or hint of movement, but all Carolyn saw in its beam were edges. She was surrounded by structures, titan pillars and basins looming over her out of the endless night, but the flashlight beam was too narrow and faint to illuminate more than a fragment of them at once.

She had held her tongue so far as well, for fear of antagonizing Nightingale, or rousing the men behind her to violence. She was under no illusions about how precarious her situation was.

Nightingale had held back on killing her for now, but he wouldn’t do so forever. He was a practiced killer who would slaughter her without remorse, employed by a madman who consorted with monsters. And at least two of the hired thugs behind her would, if given free reign, do worse to her than Nightingale; she had bested them once, and she knew that they itched to repay her for the slight.

The gunman was staying close to her, or at least just close enough. For a few moments she had entertained the thought of swinging Avery’s brain-case at him to try and knock him off guard, but he had plainly anticipated that. She could only guess at the kind of world he inhabited, to be constantly aware of such threats.

Diana Stanley probably did the same, in her own way. But she was desperately ill.

Carolyn looked past him, to where Mr. Stone hunched and scuttled. She couldn’t see what the creature had in place of feet, but she could hear a scraping rattle as the creature moved, like a crab on concrete. She shuddered, wanting to look away and purge the sight of it from her mind, forget it had ever existed. But she forced herself to watch as it scampered in jolts and rushes down the slope, as quick and deliberate as a hunting spider.

She was in the utmost danger here. She would have to be aware of everything around her, no matter how distressing, if she were to survive.

One of the creature’s chitinous limbs was extended, holding out what looked like a rough spike of black marble. Looking at it, Carolyn’s curiosity momentarily overrode her fear. “Is that the Shard?”

“Quiet,” snapped Nightingale.

“It’s all right, Sam.” Avery’s metal voice was just as it had been. He must have been keeping his silence by choice, presumably to hide his new nature from his men. “If a little noise was going to get us noticed, we’d be in pieces already. And yes, Doctor, that’s it.”

“Seriously? That’s protecting us?”

The lens swiveled with an insect-whine, and then back again. “Hard to believe, isn’t it.”

Nightingale’s flashlight beam swung left, catching the flank of something that could have been a vast trough, formed from slabs of black basalt and held high on massive pillars. “I thought it would be bigger,” she said nervously.

“It might have been, once. Paenoestes thought that it might have been part of a larger structure, a statue, maybe. But who knows—even he overestimated its abilities.”

“How do you mean?”

“He thought it would protect him from all kinds of powerful creatures, not just ones from this world. So when he tried to bargain with the Wind-Walker…” The machine issued an eerie buzzing chuckle. “The Shard eventually found its way back to Earth. Paenoestes didn’t. Or at least, not all of him.”

“This world…” Carolyn had come to accept the concept, but hearing the words said out loud still gave her vertigo. “So we’re not on Earth anymore.”

“I honestly couldn’t say. I asked Mr. Stone once, but the answer was—”

His words were cut off by a sound from above, a long, fluid slithering. Carolyn started, glancing up into the dark. “What was that?”

“Whatever lives here.” Nightingale scanned his beam up. Another trough hung over them, as big as a bridge, its construction disturbingly regular. “They’re pacing us. And we’re being followed.”

Carolyn couldn’t help but look back over her shoulder. “I thought the Shard was supposed to protect us.”

“All it does is stop us being seen.” Avery’s voice was still mechanically calm, but there was a slight jitter to it, almost as if the device he spoke through was fearful on his behalf, and the lens whined continually left and right. “We’re too far in now. All we can do is keep moving—as soon as Mr. Stone finds what he needs, we can fill up the racks and go home.”

“Is that what it meant by ‘harvest’?”

“You sure ask a lot of questions.” Nightingale stepped past her, scanning his beam around. “Makes me kinda nervous, to be… Hold on.”

Mr. Stone had stopped a few yards away, the Shard of Panestes held high, and now stood motionless. Carolyn could see the colors flashing across its head, so fast and bright they shone through the fabric of its hood.

Nightingale put his hand up. “Boss, I think this is it.”

His flashlight beam had found the end of the road. Ahead of Carolyn a brutal, perfectly regular edge scissored across their path. The road widened just before it, spreading into some kind of platform, but beyond the edge was nothing. It could have been a sheer drop.

Suddenly, Carolyn began to wonder how high up she was.

Rustles and curses sounded from the laden men behind her. They were slowing to a halt at the sight of Nightingale’s signal, easier said than done under their ungainly burdens.

Carolyn carried on a little way, squinting into the dark. There was a faint glow here, barely brighter than starlight, like a haze of distant phosphorescence miles above her head. Not enough to see by, but enough to hint at something ahead of her, past the platform edge. She could see, if she looked not directly at it but slightly away, parts of an outline.

That outline was worryingly irregular. Unlike everything else she had seen picked out by the yellow cone of Nightingale’s flashlight, the gigantic mass rising in front of her had no hard edges. It was rough, like a forested hill.

The sight was disturbing, horrible on some primal, blood-deep level Carolyn could not describe. She turned from it to see Avery’s men setting their racks down, pushing them into a neat row on the platform behind her. “What are they doing?”

“The harvest approaches.”

“Harvesting what?”

“The Feeders from Within.”

Carolyn’s breath died in her throat. In that one phrase, all her fears about the purpose of Avery’s expedition to this lightless place were realized.

The Feeders from Within. The parasitic demons so valued by the Cult of the Unseen Devourer, thousands of years ago. Vile things that would somehow enter the body of a human being, nesting there while the host suffered months of agonizing visions before, finally, granting a horrific death. The oracles of Paenoestes.

And Mr. Stone was here to gather them again, just as Paenoestes had done in ancient Greece. Professor Armitage had told her that the cult used the Shard to summon the Feeders, but his books had been wrong. Paenoestes knew the secret of forging a gate between worlds, just as Mr. Stone had done, had traveled from the isle of Delos to this limitless cavern, to seek out and harvest them without being noticed by the slithering nightmares it contained.

Just as she had surmised, the creature was planning to revive the Cult of the Unseen Devourer. And judging by the number of open jars he had brought, on a massive scale.

A dark harvest indeed.

Carolyn wasn’t the only one affected by Mr. Stone’s words. Nightingale had whirled on his heel, the beam swinging wildly up. “Holy shit, those things are here?”

“Hold your nerve, Sam. They won’t trouble us while we’re within range of the Shard.” Avery’s voice was even more jittery now, clicking and hissing like an ill-tuned radio. “Besides, they’re comfortable where they are. We’ll have to draw them forth.”

As he spoke, Mr. Stone swiveled, clattering a few paces toward Carolyn. “It requires preparation. Its essence facilitates the harvest.”

Every instinct in Carolyn told her to shrink back from the creature. Instead, she moved closer to it. Readying herself. “What preparation?”

“I’m sorry, Carolyn,” said Avery. “Genuinely I am—you’ve been a most agreeable conversationalist. But the time has come for you to fulfill your true purpose here.”

Carolyn couldn’t guess precisely what that purpose might be, but she could tell it wasn’t anything good. She let go of Avery’s cylinder and his sensory frame, both at once, and launched herself over them as they fell.

Over the past minutes she had gotten close to Mr. Stone, within arm’s reach. Before it could move, before Avery’s metal voice could raise a shout, she had barreled into it, hands clawing at the wormy mass it had in place of a head. Her small sharp fingers grabbed at it, sinking in, past the squirming tendrils and the brain-like convolutions, pushing wetly into the seething rubbery mechanics beneath.

Mr. Stone gave a buzzing, whirring cry and scrabbled back. Carolyn held on, every atom of strength concentrated on her hands, her arms. She didn’t let go, even when the creature ripped itself from her.

Two ragged handfuls of pulsing tissue came away in her fists, trailing fluid and filaments.

Avery was howling, his voice distorted into static screeches that sounded no more human than Mr. Stone. Carolyn knew she only had seconds before Nightingale was on her. She hurled the oozing handfuls away and ran at the monster again, this time grabbing at the Shard. If she could take it, she could escape in the darkness and the confusion. And Avery and his people would be exposed to the liquid, slithering things that were following them.

Her fingers were slippery, but the creature’s grip on it was loose. She tugged it free and stumbled back.

“Sam!” Avery was bellowing, his metallic voice as loud as a siren. “Get her!”

The artifact was heavy. Carolyn could feel the solid mass of it, the weird electric tingle of its cloaking aura through her skin. She cursed under its weight and tried to turn, but Mr. Stone was already back in control. In one lashing movement it erupted out from under the cloak, huge wings exploding out to send her sprawling. A second later it was surging upward, wings a blur, leaping up a dozen yards into the freezing air.

Nightingale was running at her, the flashlight beam aimed at her eyes. Before she could right herself he had caught the collar of her coat and thrown her down hard onto the ground.

There was a white flash of pain has his gun hammered into the back of her neck. She cried out and fell, hands coming up reflexively to protect her head. Ready for the second blow, knowing it would kill her.

It never came. Instead, Nightingale pulled her up onto her knees. She could feel the coldness of the weapon he still held, pressing into the wet heat it had brought forth from the base of her skull.

“Told you she was trouble.”

Avery didn’t answer. But something did. From beyond the edge of the platform, a bass rumble shivered the ground.

At first Carolyn thought it was an earthquake, a massive rockslide on the wooded hill lurking ahead of her. It was too loud for thunder, too deep for the wind. It shook the air, made the men behind her cry out and fall to their knees. It was a roar, a moan, a unspeakable, endless word from the dark dead air, a deafening, monstrous yawn. It was indolent and alien and utterly, totally uncaring. It was alive.

It was a voice.

The great bellow had frozen Nightingale where he stood. As it started to ebb he brought up the flashlight, tracking over the platform to its edge, and onto the tree-covered hill she had seen earlier.

Except that there was no hill. There were no trees. That vast bulk beyond the platform was not landscape, but life.

Thankfully, the flashlight was too far, too feeble to show what rose there in any detail. Carolyn saw no more than glimpses as the beam slid up over that immensity of black, shaggy terrain; over great veined things that might have been ears or gills, a wet blunt peg of stained ivory the size of a car, a waterfall spill of drool oozing over lakes of slick, ridged flesh.

A closed eye, house-sized, a field of translucent lid wrinkled down over its vast blister of weeping gel.

Even those hints, those fragments were too much. At the sight, Carolyn’s will fled. All the strength, all the resolve went out of her. She became a wordless thing, without thought or plans or intent. A terrified animal, staring up in mute welcome at death.

The Shard tumbled from her fingers, thudding heavily onto the slope. She sagged.

“Tsathoggua,” whispered Avery, his disembodied voice rapt, awed. “Saint Toad, the Sleeper of N’Kai, Keeper of the Feeders from Within, who nestle in his hide like fleas on a dog. We’ll draw them forth, harvest them, capture them, and take them back through the gate to Arkham.”

Mr. Stone dropped out of the air, its wings folding closed. It stalked toward her, the ragged, ravaged ball of its head dipping close. “The great project moves on. The human population of Arkham shall become hosts for the parasites. The Feeders from Within shall go forth among the masses.”

All Carolyn could do was sob out a single word.

“Why?”

“To gather data.”

Avery’s voice rose in a metallic parody of pride. “His great project, Dr. Fern. His kind’s constant study of the human species under duress. He’ll infect those preening, pouting fools by the hundreds, cataloging every screaming second as the pandemic spreads. And I’ll get to watch.”

Carolyn had no more words. The horror of Mr. Stone’s ambition was a thousand times worse than the face of the sleeping god in front of her. Now, finally, she knew what it had been planning for so many years, what it had needed the Shard for, why it had killed Hopkirk and Farrow and driven Diana to the edge of insanity and Harrigan to the depths of despair. She knew, and could not bear to know.

Mr. Stone was going to unleash the Feeders from Within on Arkham, condemning untold thousands to madness and death, just to see what would happen.

“Hush now, Doctor.” She heard the lens turn toward her. “The Feeders are happy where they are. We need to entice them away from the Sleeper’s warmth. And for that, we need you.”

Carolyn saw Mr. Stone raise a claw, showing her the strange, multi-bladed knife it held. Behind her, Nightingale shifted his stance. She felt his grip on her change. “Sorry we can’t make this quick, kid,” he said calmly. “But blood magic takes time.”

As the points of the knife pressed into her throat, Carolyn Fern closed her eyes and waited for peace to come.

Chapter Sixteen: Rise and Shine

“What are you waiting for?” hissed Diana Stanley. “Shoot the bastard!”

Harrigan gripped the rifle a little tighter, pushing the stock back into his shoulder, squinting along the iron sights. “Wait.”

“She’ll be dead if you don’t shoot!”

He twitched the gun a fraction to the left as Mr. Stone dropped down in front of Carolyn. “If I don’t do this right we’ll all be dead.”

Carolyn was on her knees. Nightingale was behind her, one hand aiming the flashlight at her throat, the other holding both his pistol and her collar tight. Mr. Stone was rearing over her, one claw outstretched, clutching a familiar glitter of blades and needles. Avery’s men were scattered in the dark nearby, watching the scene, while the bizarre talking machinery Carolyn had been carrying lay glowing on the hard ground.

He had too many targets. He could shoot Nightingale, but Carolyn would still have her throat opened by Mr. Stone’s blades. He could shoot the monster, but he had no idea if the bullet would stop it this time, and Carolyn would still be in danger from Nightingale. He could shoot Carolyn, sparing her the pain of the knives, but he really didn’t want to do that, and if he did, Diana would probably kill him for it.

He had time for a single shot, if he made up his mind now.

Diana got up. He heard the priming handle of the Thompson slam back. “If you don’t do something, I will.”

“Shut up,” Harrigan muttered. He had already chosen his target.

He fired.

* * *

The slithering mass of larvae had almost taken Harrigan down into the shaft with it.

His first instinct had been to reach down and pull Carolyn up from where she clung, but she was already too far down, and the worms too close. Her panicked instruction for him and Diana to climb out into the chimney was the only option. It felt like cowardice, leaving her in the dark while he saved himself, but it was that or be swept away.

Diana moved faster than he did. The woman was small, nimble, driven by a relentless nervous energy and almost completely uninterested in her own safety. He had watched in disbelief as she had calmly pocketed the knife and pistol before reaching into the open shaft and swinging herself off to the side, hanging tightly onto a pair of protruding bricks while the mass surged at her.

Weighed down by weapons, his coat, and pure exhaustion, Harrigan had just about enough time to blunder out into space with the Thompson still clutched in one hand.

He had barely avoided tumbling. All he could do was hold on as best he could, face pressed into the stinking bricks, while a torrent of squealing, biting dhole larvae whirled past him. It only lasted thirty seconds or so, but it felt like forever. By the time the last ones had fallen, his hand was cramping around the brick he had grabbed, his coat in shreds from worm bites, his legs shaking. The rifle slung over his back felt like it weighed half a ton.

When he was finally able to lift his head, both women were gone.

He opened his mouth to call out, but something flew at him. He ducked reflexively as two halves of a severed larva splashed the bricks next to his head, the movement almost taking him off the wall. “Shit!”

“Language.”

The voice had come from the vault floor. “Diana? What the hell are you doing?”

“Stragglers,” she replied, sounding unconcerned.

Another bisected worm spun into the chimney. Harrigan gritted his teeth and began to clamber sideways.

It was an ugly, perilous trip, the handholds he had used on the way out now slick and dripping with slime, almost costing him his grip more times than he cared to count. When he finally made it back onto the level floor Diana had finished slicing worms. She was kneeling at the edge, black guts dripping from her knife blade, peering down into the base of the shaft.

He glanced around. “Where’s Carolyn?”

“She fell.”

“What do you mean, ‘she fell’?” Harrigan followed her gaze. Below him, a sickening mass of pallid, slithering worm-flesh heaved and squirmed in the darkness. There was no sign of anything human. “She fell down there? Under that?”

“Hm. She didn’t fall very far, thank goodness. I saw her get up and climb into some kind of hole in the wall.” She stood up. “Smart little thing.”

“She’s trapped down there.” He threw her the Thompson and reached into the shaft to find a handhold.

Diana had caught the gun without looking at it. “What are you doing?”

“We’ve got to go down. Dig her out.”

“Mark, dear, some of those larvae are alive and wriggling. Do you really want to go rooting through them?” She rubbed her shoulder, the fingers coming up bloody. “They have quite a nasty nip, you know.”

“You said they were all dying,” he growled.

“They are. They’ll begin to dissolve soon.”

“How long will that be?”

She shrugged. “About half an hour, if those horrible books in the Lodge were right. When they’re that young they simply can’t exist in our world.” She lifted the Thompson and began to examine it. “Which is a good thing for us. If any of them survived, this planet would be riddled with burrows inside fifty years.”

The woman’s lack of concern was infuriating. “I can’t leave her down there for half an hour! She’ll suffocate.”

“She shouldn’t. You can last forty-five minutes in a coffin.”

He stared at her. “How in the hell do you know that?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised what Sanford taught us. I only hope I never have to—”

From the far end of the vault, very distant but quite unmistakable, came the nasty flat clap of a pistol shot.

Harrigan froze. There had been no flash, and the report was dulled by space and echoes. “Where was that?”

“Beneath us.” Diana stepped toward him and put a hand on his arm. Her voice was quiet, urgent. “Mark, listen to me. That shaft we were in looks abandoned, but it isn’t. I saw it on my way into the house—the bushes have been cut away at the top. I think something moves up and down here fairly often, and it can’t come through the way we did because it would trip the spell.”

Harrigan did a swift mental calculation. Diana had already said there might be more elevator shaft than they had traveled. “You think there’s more down there?”

She smiled her terrible smile. “There has to be.”

As if in answer, a scream echoed up from the vault’s other end.

Before he knew what he was doing, Harrigan started toward the elevator cage. Then his brain caught up with his body and he stopped dead, one foot held in mid-air. “Uh oh.”

“Don’t worry, dear. That summoning was a one-shot. Avery used up a lot of power setting it off, and it’ll be simply ages before he can use it again.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. He’ll be quite spent.” Diana went striding past him, still clutching the Thompson. She looked back, still smiling. “He’s probably rolled over and gone to sleep by now.”

* * *

It didn’t take Harrigan long to find the elevator’s concealed control. He pressed the button and felt the cage jerk and then begin to drop. “How in the hell didn’t I spot that?”

“Think of the fun we’d have missed if you had.”

He glared sideways at her. “Can I have my gun back now?”

“Hm. No.”

He heard voices as the elevator cage rumbled down. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but one of them sounded a lot like Carolyn. He caught Diana’s eye and held a finger to his lips. The woman nodded, already knowing the need for silence.

By the time they reached the bottom of the shaft, though, the voices had faded. Harrigan heard one final yelp from Carolyn, quite close by, and then silence.

He drew his pistol and shoved the cage doors open.

There was no sign of Carolyn, or anyone else. Only Phillip Avery was there to greet them, his arms spread in welcome.

The lamp was still shining over his metal chair, sparing them nothing of the sight. Harrigan stepped warily out of the cage and padded toward the opened man, hoping he was seeing a fake, a wax dummy of some kind, an effigy that Avery had left there for him to stumble upon. As soon as he got close, though, he could tell that the body was real. The coppery smell from that goblet skull was enough to convince him.

He glanced over at Diana and gave her a silent, helpless shrug.

In reply, she mouthed a single word. Stone.

“Guess they must have had a falling-out,” he whispered, and moved on, patting the dead man’s shoulder as he passed by.

Diana was creeping toward a round doorway, her pale face illuminated by fitful sparks of light issuing from within. Harrigan saw her stop, straighten slightly in shock at what she saw there, and paced quickly across the cluttered space to join her. “What?” he hissed.

“I know where she’s gone.”

“Keep your voice down!”

“She’s gone, Mark. They all have. There’s no one left here.” She pointed at the whirling disk of blackness hovering in front of them. “That’s a gate. It’s like a bridge, or a hole torn between worlds. I’ve seen pictures, woodcuts, read the incantations, but I never… I honestly…”

Her voice faltered. He went to put his hand on her shoulder, to steady her, but he knew the way she would react. Instead he just stood, feeling helpless and stupid and awkward.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “We walk into that, and end up somewhere else?”

“According to the Lodge teachings, yes.” She turned to him. “Mark, forming a gate isn’t easy. It takes a lot of preparation and a lot of power, and even then it’s dangerous. Stone wouldn’t have done it unless there was a good reason.”

“No,” he replied, remembering what Avery had told him back in the woods. “It doesn’t have reasons. It has purposes.”

“Well, whatever else it has, it’s got Carolyn. She’s on the other side of that gate, and I’m going to help her.”

He stared into the whirling black circle. It was like a storm, a tornado, the center calm, the edges all whipping, roiling destruction. “In the clearing, Stone said the project could go ahead now that the Shard was complete. It’s something to do with the cult, with the Feeders from Within.” He took a deep breath. “Diana, I’ve seen what those things can do. If Stone has got any plans that involve them, we’ve got to stop it. No matter what happens to us.”

“Well, of course.” She smiled again, but this time it was rather a sad smile. “And poor Carolyn is waiting for us, isn’t she?”

He nodded. “It’s rude to keep a lady waiting.”

“Such a gentleman. Anyone would think we were respectable. Shall we go?”

* * *

It wasn’t hard to follow Nightingale and his strange little group. The gunman’s flashlight beam was the only thing to see. All else was dripping, rustling darkness.

Once they were through the gate, Diana, in a voice hushed half with wonder and half with stark terror, had told him that the place was called N’Kai, an immense cavern miles under the surface of the Earth. “Or maybe not Earth. They made me read about it in the Lodge. Liber Ivonis, mainly.” She shuddered. “Horrid thing.”

The memory was clearly troubling to her, but Harrigan had to ask. “What did it say?”

She shook her head. “Trust me, you’re better off not knowing. But I’ll tell you one thing. The Shard must be very powerful.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because we’re still alive. Now come on, I don’t want to get too far from it.”

By the way the group ahead of them moved, it seemed that Avery’s men had the same idea. Mr. Stone held the thing in one claw like a trophy, and the men clustered as close as they could to the creature. They bumped into each other in their eagerness, the glass cylinders in the racks they held chiming dully with each collision. If Harrigan hadn’t been able to see Nightingale’s flashlight, he thought more than once, he could probably have just followed the cussing.

Even Nightingale himself wasn’t immune. He had looked back several times, no doubt aware that someone or something was on his tail, but he’d still not dared to stray far from Mr. Stone’s side.

And so, for perhaps half a mile, Harrigan and Diana walked on into darkness, dodging between near-invisible pillars and the bases of tall, cup-shaped basins, barely able to see their own feet or the smooth ground on which they stood, focused only on the voices and the swinging, bobbing cone of yellow light ahead.

They were not heard. Their footfalls made no echoes in the still air, and the endless whisper of drips hid their breathing.

Abruptly, the group stopped, Nightingale’s flashlight swinging back as his men began to lower their mysterious burdens. Harrigan cursed under his breath. His view of Carolyn and her captors was too obscured here. He needed to be able to see what Mr. Stone was up to, so that he could do something about it when the time was right.

He tapped Diana’s arm, ignoring the reflexive flinch that caused, and nudged her toward the left.

It was more perilous walking off the road. The way there had been smooth, a seamless surface, as featureless as glass, but away from it the ground began to step upward in a series of low, angular slabs. The height of the slabs increased the farther away he got, and in the faint phosphorescent glow that filtered down from N’Kai’s distant ceiling he could see that there was a slight curve to the layout, as if a vast amphitheater had been laid out on the edge of a cliff.

He drew Diana down about thirty yards away from Nightingale’s group, and slipped the rifle off his shoulder.

It wasn’t the same Springfield he had used in Mexico, a decade before: that had been lost in the explosion that had been the catalyst of all his woe. But it was close. It felt solid and familiar in his hands, against his shoulder. It was a totem of his own, a protective talisman he could use and understand. Mr. Stone had the Shard to ward off whatever called N’Kai home. Mark Harrigan had a 1903 Springfield bolt-action with as many stripper-clips as he could carry.

He settled himself, squinted along the sight, just in time to see Carolyn clawing at Mr. Stone’s fungal brain.

He brought his head up again, staring. He had known for some time that the young psychologist could shake off her bookish timidity whenever the need arose; she had already proved herself more than capable in a crisis. Still, the sight of her jumping at the eyeless creature and doing it physical harm was a shock.

“Oh my,” said Diana quietly. “Carolyn, you devil.”

“That won’t stop it,” he whispered, horrified. “Me and my squad shot those things, beat them, burned them up. They still kept— Damn it!”

His prediction had been all too accurate. Stone had flung her down, and Nightingale was launching himself toward her.

All the girl’s bravery was for nothing. Harrigan had been waiting for the right time, and it was on him without warning. Carolyn Fern was going to die in front of him, unless he made his shot.

* * *

There could be no more hesitation. Mr. Stone was on the ground, now, and Nightingale had Carolyn on her knees. The girl was sagging; the sight of something in the gunman’s beam had stunned her. Diana had seen what it was too, had glimpsed the source of that unimaginable seismic moan. She had gasped out a word that Harrigan could not have pronounced with a week’s practice, and turned away from it with a sob of horror.

Harrigan had seen nothing, except for what lay in his gunsights.

There was only one target he could choose. He knew he could hit it, even at this range and in the meager overspill from Nightingale’s flashlight. There was no wind, no obstruction. His aim was practiced and true.

He fired.

The Springfield kicked hard against his shoulder, and the Shard of Panestes exploded into a hundred razored fragments.

The effect was immediate, far more so than he had expected, and more terrible. As the bullet struck and the Shard flew apart, Harrigan felt it die.

There was a sizzle through the air, a lash of sensation, like the shockwave from an explosion or the sting of an unexpected slap. It lasted half a second, maybe less, but when it had passed it was as if a fog was gone from his nerve endings. In its wake, every sense, every feeling was suddenly clear, sight and taste and hearing all painfully sharp.

He froze in place, stunned by the feeling. In every nameable way, nothing around him had changed. But he had felt the Shard’s power vanish as it shattered, exposing him as starkly as a searchlight.

Everything in N’Kai could see him now, and those on the platform below.

The group seemed to fly apart, exploding like the Shard, each separate element of it whirling apart from the others. At the sound of the shot, Nightingale’s men had scattered. Mr. Stone was scuttling back, spinning away from Carolyn to claw at the broken pieces of Shard, and Nightingale was already gone from her. When Harrigan had fired the gunman had leapt away into the shadows.

Only Carolyn was still. She lay where Nightingale had dropped her, a crumpled mote at the epicenter of Harrigan’s chaos.

Hired men were running in every direction, some raising weapons, others just fleeing. Harrigan saw a flashlight flicker on, and then another, heard shouts and curses and gunshots. He ignored them, shifting his aim toward Mr. Stone. The creature was hunched over the Shard’s ruins, claws a blur of motion as it attempted to re-assemble the fragments, its head a storm of agitated color.

“No, you don’t,” Harrigan muttered, squeezing the trigger. “You ugly son of a bitch.”

There was a gunshot flash from below and a bullet whirred past his ear.

“Jesus!” He ducked left, his own shot going wild as he fell away, and saw Nightingale crouching behind a pillar, aiming a pistol at him. The man had dropped his flashlight and was firing up into almost pure darkness, and he’d still come within a foot of ending the matter with one bullet.

Another flash, and the scream of a ricochet on his other side. Harrigan had no cover, and Nightingale was bracketing him. He tried to bring the rifle around, only to feel a whip of air, a tug-slap at his collar. The gunman’s third shot.

Light flared above him, a stuttering white flare as the Thompson thundered out a stream of lead toward the platform. Harrigan flinched under the shock of it, the almost physical impact of the noise, saw Diana striding down past him with the Thompson jumping and hammering in her hands. She was laughing, her white face twisted in unholy joy.

When he looked back to the platform, Nightingale was gone.

Diana’s shots weren’t hitting anything—she didn’t have the strength to counter the Thompson’s ferocious recoil—but everyone still on their feet was running for cover. Harrigan scrambled up, jamming another stripper-clip into the Springfield. “Aim high! Just get them to keep their damn heads down!”

“Spoilsport.” Diana braced herself, triggering another wild spray of bullets.

The level of confusion was more than Harrigan could have hoped for. He launched himself toward the platform, loping as fast as he dared down the slabs. Bullets thudded past him. A man turned toward the sound of his footsteps, the stubby tube of a sawn-off in his hands. Harrigan fired from the hip, leaping over the spouting corpse as it crumpled.

He reached Carolyn, skated to a halt, and dropped to his knee next to her. “Doc?”

She whimpered softly. In the light from Nightingale’s discarded flashlight Harrigan could see that her eyes were squeezed shut. He reached down and took her shoulder, hauled her back onto her knees as he heard the Thompson clatter again, saw a nearby man’s chest erupt. Diana was learning the trick of it. There was no time for care. “Come on, will ya? We’ve got to get back to the gate.”

She opened her eyes and stared at him for a moment, as if at a stranger, then seemed to blink awake. “Oh my goodness. The Shard.”

“It’s gone. It’s in pieces.”

“Where’s Avery?” She scrambled up, grabbing the flashlight from the ground and scanning it wildly around her. “Did Nightingale take him?”

“Avery’s dead.”

“No, he’s not.” She pushed her spectacles back up her nose, a subconscious moment of normality amid the flashing chaos. “He just looks that way.”

Harrigan heard panicked cries from across the platform, and glanced back over his shoulder. A knot of men were running toward him, and he brought the rifle up. Their attention was not on him, however. They were looking behind them, sliding, falling, shouting in blind terror and rising to run again.

Behind them, things were moving. Pieces of darkness were detaching themselves, droozing down from their basins to slither in pursuit. One lashed out an inky tendril and caught the slowest man. Harrigan heard him scream, thin and high, as he was ripped into the air and away.

“Doc, we’re out of time here!” He tugged at her arm. “We’ve got to go!”

“Wait!” She pulled away, running a few yards back into the shadows.

The ground vibrated. He heard a distant, rising thunder, the squirm and shift of a thousand tons of amorphous fat and gristle grinding inexorably toward wakefulness. That hellish groan bellowed out from the darkness again, shivering through his bones, roiling his blood, his gut. Whatever Diana and Carolyn had seen in the yawning space beyond the platform edge, it was moving.

Harrigan scrambled off after Carolyn; he found her standing before the glowing machines she had carried earlier. As he approached her, the lens turned toward him, gleaming in the yellow cone of her flashlight.

He glared at it warily. “Doc, what the hell is this?”

“It’s Avery,” said Carolyn. Her face was a mask of disgust. “His brain’s in there. Don’t ask me how—it’s one of Mr. Stone’s party tricks.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Harrigan,” droned the machine. “You idiot. Have you any idea what you’ve woken?”

“I take that back.” He extended a foot, kicked the cylinder sharply. “What happened, Avery? Mr. Stone get tired of looking at you?”

“He’ll be here soon,” Avery replied. “You can ask him.”

Harrigan stepped back, rifle centered on the glowing frame. “Thanks, but we’re not staying around. The neighborhood’s gone downhill really fast.”

“Mark,” said Carolyn warningly, looking up. “Speak of the Devil…”

An eyeless nightmare slammed into the ground in front of him, its wings a frantic blur.

The blast of air sent Harrigan staggering backward. He brought the Springfield up and fired on reflex, but the creature had already grabbed the barrel with two claws and wrenched it aside.

The monster was twisting, shaking itself like a wet dog. Its seething head was swiveling, the wounds Carolyn had torn there already knitting closed, and its grip was horrifically strong. Harrigan tugged hard on the Springfield, but he couldn’t get it loose. “Diana!”

“Stone, don’t just stand there.” The lens on Avery’s machine whirred around, its jittery motion more expressive than the dead sound of its voice. “Get me out of here!”

“The project is interrupted.”

“That wasn’t my fault.”

“Cause is immaterial.” Mr. Stone was stooping, still holding the rifle in its claws. Its head had stopped moving, writhing tendrils stretching forward. It reached down with another limb, past the cylinder, to scrape at the ground.

The claw came up holding a finger-sized fragment of Shard. “Time is immaterial. The great project begins again.”

“What are you doing?” Avery’s machine sounded tinny, almost petulant. “What about me?”

“It is no longer required,” wheezed Mr. Stone, and erupted back into the air.

Harrigan stepped back, his rifle freed. “Doc, light him up!”

The flashlight beam darted upward, whipping left and right over dripping rock, animated gouts of what looked like black tar, a hovering tangle of worms and claws and a haze of fan-like wings. “There!” she cried.

“This one’s for Farrow,” muttered Harrigan, and squeezed the trigger.

The Springfield jumped and flashed in his hands. High above him, one of Mr. Stone’s wings sheared at the root and went spinning away.

The creature tilted in the air, screeching.

Behind it, something nightmarishly huge and heavy moved at the limits of the flashlight beam. The distant vastness beyond the platform had split, opened, and as Harrigan watched it yawned impossibly wide, a great fracture in its surface gaping, wet and ragged-edged.

For a moment he was seeing some seismic event, the opening of a volcano or crevasse, and waited for the ground to move beneath him. Then something surged out of the fissure, blurringly fast, a spit-slicked curl of gluey muscle as long as a redwood. It struck Mr. Stone in mid-air, whipped around the chitinous body like a snake around prey. Harrigan heard a ghastly squeaking crackle as the eyeless thing was crushed, the final buzzing shriek it emitted, and then it was gone, drawn down into the dank cavernous maw and devoured.

He stared. “What…what is that?”

“I don’t know,” breathed Carolyn. “I don’t want to know.”

“You fool.” Avery’s voice had gone dull, flatter than ever. “You ignorant, vengeful savage. You’ve condemned us all. Yourself, me, this simpering whore… We’re all offerings to the toad now.”

“Speak for yourself.” Harrigan reached over and took Carolyn’s arm. “Come on, Doc. Let’s find the gate.”

The frame glowed in fury. “Stone was keeping the gate open, you worthless dullard!”

That was when Carolyn Fern reached down to the cylinder and, very calmly and without fuss, took each of its three cables, one by one in her small hand, and tugged them out of their sockets. Then she picked up the frame and tossed it into the dark.

She gave Harrigan a tired smile. “My mom told me that if you can’t say something nice, you shouldn’t say anything at all.”

“Remind me not to get on her bad side.” Harrigan looked at the cylinder, lying blind and deaf and unspeaking on the gleaming platform. Suddenly, all he wanted was daylight. “Or yours. Now let’s get out of here.”

Chapter Seventeen: Endgame

Diana made her journey back to the gate in uneasy company. As she bolted past the ranked pillars, her way illuminated by a stolen flashlight, the survivors of Nightingale’s expedition ran too. She could see men ahead of her, fleeing headlong toward the distant sparkle of salvation, and could hear more behind, lamenting their fate with sobs and panted curses.

None of them troubled her. Nobody had the time, or the breath. For that few minutes—that terrifying half-mile sprint with all N’Kai surging into shapeless, merciless life about them—their enmities were forgotten. They were all prey, and they knew it.

The sound of pursuit was all around Diana as she ran—a turgid, unending slither. Something was in the troughs that lined the road, flowing along them like thick oil, racing ahead of the runners and crossing over their heads in a constant torrent. That fluidity was an illusion, though, a temporary state at best. The formless servants of Tsathoggua flowed when it suited them. Should other states of matter become more appropriate, Diana had no doubt they could employ them just as easily.

Little wonder, she thought, that the books she had been forced to read at the Lodge contained no more than hints about their nature. There are some things that even madmen should not describe.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, the group dwindled as it moved. When Diana was less than halfway back to the gate the spawn took a man behind her, close enough for her to hear the crackle of his bones, the thud and slap of spilled organs hitting the road as they unstitched him. She looked back, less to confirm the man’s demise than to judge how much time she had before the inky stuff reached out after her, and as she did so she almost collided with another of Avery’s victims.

This one was slumped against a pillar, his face scarlet and dripping. He was older than most of the hirelings, heavier. The dash had been too much for him.

Diana slowed, pirouetting around him to avoid losing her balance. “You really should be getting along.”

The man put his hand up. “Give me a minute,” he gasped.

“I’ve none to give, sorry.”

If the man had an answer, he never got to voice it. A limb of glossy black sludge arced down from the basin he sheltered under and simply swept him off the edge of the road.

Diana watched him teeter for a horrifying second, battling gravity, then he toppled and fell, shrieking. She saw him vanish, heard the dwindling of his cries, and realized that she had not been walking on a road this whole time, but a bridge, a suspended processional that could have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet in the air.

It made a terrifying sense. After all, how else might the spawn fling their sacrifices into Tsathoggua’s yawning maw, if not from a great height?

A lurch of nausea stumbled her, the weaker half of her mind leaping momentarily into control. Both she and Harrigan had pressed their backs against those great pillars while following Carolyn, several times, never knowing that they were within inches of the edge. One misplaced shove, one step in the wrong direction, and she would have found herself whirling into the abyss.

For one swooping, vertiginous second, all Diana wanted to do was fling herself to that black surface and hold on with both hands, but weakness was a luxury she had no time for. The spawn were at her heels.

She put her head down and ran on.

* * *

The gate was still open by the time she reached it, but it was smaller. Without Mr. Stone’s influence it was sinking in on itself like a deflating balloon, the whipping threads at its rim growing dark and slow.

Harrigan was there waiting for her, with Carolyn at his side, both of them sagging with exhaustion. “You took your time,” he panted.

“The traffic was a nightmare.”

“Okay, I’ll go first.” He turned to the gate, eying it warily. “Are you sure this is safe?”

“Hm. Given that some of Avery’s people are already on the far side, perhaps you should have this.” She stepped forward and passed him the Thompson. “I’m not sure how many I fired, but it looks intimidating.”

He took the weapon, nodded his thanks, and stepped through the circle, vanishing from N’Kai as if he had never been.

In his wake, Carolyn was left swaying. Shock, injury, and exhaustion were wreaking a terrible revenge on the girl. She had discarded her coat as if fevered, despite the chill. There was a film of vomit on her chin, and her face was pinched, pale. A life spent among books and case histories had not prepared her for such exertions.

Diana took her by the shoulders. “Ready?”

“You’ll be right behind me, won’t you?”

“Of course I will.” She pushed the woman through, felt the gate take her and bear her away.

“Wait!”

The voice had come from behind her. Diana sighed and turned to see a stocky hireling running toward her, his jacket flapping.

She recognized him. He was one of the pair that had gone to kill Carolyn in the library; she’d watched, concealed, as the police had hauled them away. He was maybe ten yards away now, fists and feet pumping in his eagerness to reach the gate, his face blotchy and open around his howls. Behind him, the darkness boiled, racing toward her.

“Don’t leave me,” the man squalled.

Diana took the pistol out of her pocket and shot him in the leg.

He tumbled, the shattered bone folding instantly beneath him, rolling to a messy, sobbing halt on the smooth ground. She saw him try to get up, one hand clamped around the spurting hole in his thigh, the other stretched imploringly out toward her. His cries had silenced, now, which was something to be thankful for. Diana had heard men beg before—for money, for sex, for mercy—and took no joy in the sound.

“Hurry,” she told him flatly. “Don’t dawdle now.”

With that, she turned on her heel, closed her eyes, and stepped across the schism. A rush of dry, warm air hit her, blasting at her as though she were traveling at colossal speed, and then she was back in the world.

She opened her eyes onto flashlights and gun barrels.

“Good of you to join us, Miss Stanley.” Samuel Nightingale was standing just inside the circular doorway, visible largely due to the cigarette glowing between his lips. “Anyone else on the way?”

Diana sighed. Two of Avery’s survivors were over to her left, pistols leveled at her face. Harrigan and Carolyn were on their knees, disarmed, hands laced behind their heads, while a third man stood with a shotgun aimed at them. Diana noticed the gunman’s line of fire was carefully slanted, so that the buckshot spread would catch them both.

“Oh, there was someone right behind me,” she said airily. “Nasty little fellow in a brown jacket. He’ll be along soon, so long as nothing bad’s happened to him.”

“While we wait, put the piece down and kick it over to me.”

He was holding the Thompson casually, one-handed. Diana hadn’t lied to Harrigan about not knowing the number of shots she’d fired, but there were some left. She placed the pistol carefully on the cavern floor and tapped it toward Nightingale.

It stopped a little short. He smiled. “And the shiv.”

Her knife came to rest next to the pistol. As he stooped to pick them up she glanced back at the gate. It was even smaller now, its circumference falling inward. A tunnel sliding away from her. “Oh, dear.”

“We’ll give him a minute.” Nightingale reached around under his jacket and pushed the pistol into the back of his belt. He kept the knife out, turning it over to study it. “Quite a pig-sticker.”

“Well, I do keep meeting pigs.”

“Cute.” He used the point of it to wave her toward Harrigan. “Feet against the wall, if you don’t mind. Anything to make the boys feel less twitchy.”

Harrigan turned his head slightly as she settled next to him. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. We won.”

“Looks like Hookie won’t be joining us, fellers.” Nightingale checked his wristwatch. “Pity. Finding good people’s getting to be hard around here. Of course, it’d be easier if Harrigan didn’t keep killing ’em.”

Harrigan looked up at him. “It’s a gift.”

“I ain’t denying it.” Nightingale slipped the knife into his jacket pocket. He crouched, dropping to Harrigan’s level. “Which is why you and the broads are still alive. I want you on my team.”

“You have got to be kidding.”

The man took a long drag on his cigarette. “Harrigan, don’t make this personal. I don’t. Sure, Mr. Stone got up to some bad stuff. We’ve all just seen that. But he’s gone now. Avery passed the business to me and I aim to do it proud. No messing around with the hinky shit, just giving people what they want when they want it.”

“The king is dead,” said Carolyn. “Long live the king.”

Nightingale shrugged. “Somebody’s gotta be in charge. Look, Harrigan, you know how I operate. I treat my people well and don’t make a mess unless I have to. Avery Imports is still a solid front, the boss made sure of that. And right now I’ve got a hundred cases of good booze up in the storage shed, just waiting to make Arkham happy. What do you say?”

Harrigan took his hands down from his head and rolled his head around as if to loosen tired muscles. He frowned. “What about these two?”

“What about them?” Nightingale got up. “Let’s face it, no one’s going to believe them even if they do decide to spill the beans. If you’re on my side of the door you can make sure of that, a little insurance policy in both directions. You’re not stupid, are you, Dr. Fern?”

“No, sir,” replied Carolyn quietly. “I’m not.”

“See? We’re all good.”

“Which is why I know you’ve got no intention of letting potential witnesses go free, sir, whatever you might tell Mr. Harrigan.” She dropped her own hands. “You said it yourself: you don’t make things personal. You don’t make anything personal. That’s why you’re so dangerous. And as soon as you’ve got Mark where you want him, you’ll kill Diana and me and not even think about it the next day.”

“Bad for business to do anything else.” Harrigan smirked. “She’s got you there, buddy.”

Nightingale spread his hands. “Hey, it was worth a try. Sure I can’t tempt you, Harrigan? It’s solid work if you don’t let feelings get in the way.”

“That’s the part I have trouble with.”

“Damn shame. Okay, boys, ice ’em. And don’t worry about clearing up, I’ll be sealing this whole place pretty soon.”

“Really, boss?” The man who had spoken was young, gingery hair slicked back under a newsboy cap. “Killing girls?”

“Just like killing anyone else, Archie.” Nightingale stepped forward, bringing the Thompson up. “Watch.”

Black tar thundered through the cave.

It spat out of the gate like water from a fire hose, hissing with loathsome speed through the circular doorway and out into the main cavern. Nightingale ducked forward under it, the stream missing his head by inches, but the man with the shotgun wasn’t so quick. He was gone in an instant, hammered clear off his feet and flung away.

Harrigan and Carolyn were already gone. Diana jumped up and hurled herself into Nightingale. He was close, off balance. Before he could speak, she snatched the knife from his pocket and slammed it into him, blindly, as hard as she could.

There was a flash, a spike of raw heat through her. She stepped back, hearing a metal clatter as the Thompson hit the cave floor.

Nightingale was standing in front of her. He had her pistol in his hand. He had brought it out and fired it in the fraction of a second it had taken her to cross the distance between them. She had never met anyone so fast.

The speed was gone from him now, though. Diana’s butcher knife was buried up to the hilt in his neck.

They stood, quite still, facing one another as the cavern began to come apart around them. They were at the center of the wheel, the eye of a storm made of chaos and shouts and gunshots. While Avery’s last two men howled and the spawn bellowed and all Mr. Stone’s equipment went tumbling to ruin, she stayed where she was, her eyes fixed on his.

After all, they had just killed each other.

He was staring at her with a look of puzzled concern on his face. She saw him bring his hand up, his fingertips fluttering at the handle of the knife. His mouth opened as if to speak, but the blade had robbed him of words, of air. It was a big knife. The point of it was on the other side of him, and half his neck was steel. All he could do was stand and sway, as the blood leapt from his severed arteries to paint the cavern floor, until enough of it was gone from him, and he crumpled.

Diana stepped over him. She reached down to slide the knife free of his neck. The last breath in him sighed up through his opened throat, and he was still.

She took the cigarette from his mouth, placed it in her own, then turned her back on him and ran.

The gate had shrunk to nothing, but enough of the spawn had pulsed through to half fill the main cavern. It had struck the far wall horizontally, splashing out into a fan of root-like tendrils and back again, spars and loops of it snapping onto the ceiling, the floor. Diana ran through a forest of the stuff, past Avery’s lit body toward the elevator cage. Harrigan was already there, pulling Carolyn in after him.

He saw her, and beckoned frantically.

She dove past Archie, the younger man, and fell in next to Harrigan. The boy was slower. Fear had unmade him. He stumbled toward her, letting out high whoops of disbelieving grief. Diana reached out to him, felt his smooth fingers brush her own.

Ropes of inky slime struck him from behind, sledging into his back.

In a second the stuff had him, slithering over and around him, pasting threads of itself over his mouth, into his ears and eyes. Where it touched him, the skin beneath it burned, frothed into a smoking black foam. Archie gave a muffled, bubbling shriek and fell away.

Harrigan slammed the doors closed and hit the button hard with the heel of his hand. The cage jerked on its cables, and began to rise.

Diana stared down, through the hinged metal, unable to look away. Below her the spawn was going wild, lashing out in every direction as if in a fury. It was screaming, emitting bellowing howls and yammers as it smashed Mr. Stone’s equipment into tattered foil, tearing at the cables and the racks of equipment, shattering the glassy tanks and flinging their twitching contents across the cave.

Her view of it contracted, shrank into a line, and was gone.

She sagged forward, resting her forehead against the cool metal of the cage door. A tickle caught the back of her throat, and she coughed, hand coming up in reflex to the hole in her coat, just above the left chest pocket.

The hole went all the way in. Diana could feel what lurked at the end of it, like a spider in a tunnel, cold and solid and unrelenting. She coughed again, and felt the wet heat of the wound soaking into her clothes.

“Damn,” she muttered. “That was a good coat.”

Behind her, Carolyn sobbed. Harrigan was white-faced, his fists bunched, an old horror behind his eyes. He was whispering something, a phrase she couldn’t make out, over and over.

The sounds of destruction faded.

Dull grey light appeared at the top of the cage and expanded downward: the wine cellar. Diana reached down, her fingers hovering over the button in case the cage stopped, but it seemed as eager to reach the top of the shaft as she was. The vault fell away from her again, its gritty floor littered with rat bones.

Harrigan glanced across at her. “Now what?”

“I don’t know.” She coughed. “We can’t let it escape. Being on the wrong side of the gate’s driven it mad. If it gets out of the mansion it will kill everything it finds.” She turned to Carolyn, put a hand out to the sobbing girl. “We have to trap it here somehow, seal it in.”

“Then we come back with a box of dynamite and a cement truck.” His forehead creased. “Are you okay?”

“Of course.”

“Your breathing sounds funny.”

She took a short drag on the cigarette. “These things will kill me one day.”

Under her feet, something ground and slid against the floor of the cage. “Damn,” Harrigan muttered. “Okay, as soon as we stop, go for the door.”

Diana didn’t reply. She could feel the spawn questing beneath her, in the shaft, scraping at the brakes and the cables. They weren’t going to make it out of the elevator.

A slender tendril of pure, glistening darkness oozed up into the cage, next to her head.

She could see light now, painfully bright after so long in darkness, a sliver growing to a line, a line to a rectangle. They were reaching the top of the shaft. Diana felt for the door on her side and gripped the handles tight, readying herself, hoping that the death Nightingale had lodged in her wouldn’t steal her strength when she needed it most.

Harrigan took the other door.

The elevator jolted to a halt. Harrigan shoved his door open, Diana hers. They leapt out together as the entire cage bounced from a massive impact. The floor splintered. Carolyn sagged out, blinking in the light, and reached out to steady herself.

The tendril whipped around her bare arm, a spiral of black against her skin. She screamed.

Diana swept the knife out, the bright blade of it sweeping down to sever the tendril in a single blow. The inky sludge dropped away, spattering on the tiled floor, but the damage was done. Carolyn’s forearm was foaming, sizzling, grey smoke curling up from the ruined flesh.

She gave a low moan, and collapsed.

Harrigan caught her as she went down and dragged her away from the cage. Behind him, the elevator was a writhing nightmare of oily ropes and spars. Diana heard the creak of overstressed masonry, the high squeal of metal as the sickening fluid mass hauled itself up into the light, crushing the cage floor as it rose.

It was fighting gravity as well as structure, but it would overcome both in moments. Harrigan staggered away from it, Carolyn a dead weight in his arms.

Diana watched them, as if from a long way away. “Harrigan? I know what to do. Follow me.”

* * *

There was only one structure in Spaulding House that could be the storage shed. Diana had to go through a couple of doors and a very well-appointed living room before she found it, but before long she was striding into a long space filled with crates and barrels. “Here,” she said.

Harrigan struggled in after her, still half-supporting Carolyn. The girl was semi-conscious from pain and shock. Her arm had stopped foaming, but the spawn’s touch had left it a livid mass of blisters and dripping, peeling skin.

“You want to burn it?”

“It worked on the byakhee.” She put her shoulder against a stack of crates, heaved against it. Something deep inside her moved agonizingly as she did so, and there was a slipperiness under her feet that made it difficult to get a purchase. “Mark, help me.”

He set Carolyn down and ran to her, wrenching the stack over. It teetered on its point of balance for a moment, rather as Nightingale had done, then arced over, the crates at the top of the stack crashing apart when they struck the hard floor. The bottles within had been packed in straw and rags. Most of them shattered anyway.

Diana was panting. It was getting hard to breathe. “We need more.”

“You’re bleeding.” Harrigan picked up a crate and dashed it to the ground. “He shot you, didn’t he.”

“It’s just a scratch. “ She picked up a bottle of brandy and hurled it at the wall. It detonated satisfyingly. “And I scratched him back.”

He grinned. “I’ll bet.”

He turned from her and began tipping more stacks over. Diana found a barrel, unstoppered it with a couple of blows from her knife, and tipped it over. Liquor, sharp and stinking, surged out over the littered floor.

There was a hammering impact from outside the room. Diana looked up and saw masonry whirl past the doorway. Inky feelers began to appear around the frame.

She froze. “It’s here.”

Harrigan was breathing hard, his coat stained with liquor, glass and straw and splinters in his hair. “Have we done enough?”

“We’ll find out.” She looked back at the other door, the one that led outside, next to the roller shutters. “Mark, you need to get Carolyn away.”

“You, too. That’s no scratch.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be right behind you.” She picked up a bottle, swiped the neck of it off with the knife and stuffed a length of packing rag into the jagged end. “Avery will have cars around here somewhere. You can get one started, can’t you?”

“Sure.” He hauled Carolyn up, his arm around her. She whimpered at his touch. The pain from her ruined arm must have been awful.

Diana set the bottle down on one of the few undamaged crates and pulled open the door bolts. The door was thick metal, built to withstand the attentions of inquisitive policemen, at least for a few minutes while those behind it could make an escape. It would serve. “Go on. Get her to a safe distance. I’ll set the fires.”

She watched him walk Carolyn through, into the cold morning air.

Past him, Harpers Hill stretched out away from her, the rounded crest of it still glittering with frost. Beyond the treeline she could see more hills rising, lower as they neared the fields around Arkham, then farmland and the town itself, hazy and abstract in the winter light. The sky was overcast, but dawn had turned it to a billowed layer of sullen yellow. Harrigan’s breath puffed out in white clouds as he pulled Carolyn away.

It was not a nice day by anyone’s standards. But Diana enjoyed looking at it for a second or two.

Then she pulled the door closed and slammed both the bolts home.

The effort set sparks whining in her vision. She was feeling airy, lightheaded, although whether that was from the bullet or the vaporous booze all around her she couldn’t be sure. She put her shoulder against the door and closed her eyes.

Harrigan’s fist hit it from the other side. “Diana!”

“Mark, I have to do this. If we leave the door open it will just escape.”

“Don’t be stupid!”

She straightened up, looking back toward the doorway.

The spawn was hauling its oily bulk through. Part of it had hardened temporarily into jagged, peg-like teeth, another section was a forest of whipping tendrils, elsewhere a clawed, stilted limb that reached in like a cripple’s crutch and dragged the whole vile mass of it along.

It had brought its victims with it, for trophies, perhaps, or to somehow devour them and increase its mass. They were twisted things, blackened meat and corroded bone, dangling from thick tendrils of living tar.

Diana looked at the spawn without fear. Her weaker half was gone now, hiding so deep inside she would never be found. Safe, at last.

There was still a little of the cigarette left. She sucked on it, making the filter end glow yellow-hot, and touched it to the liquor-soaked rag. The cloth puffed into flame.

“Look after her, Mr. Harrigan.”

“Don’t do this!” He was hauling on the door, trying to drag it off its hinges, but it was too strong for him. “Please! Diana, it should be me!”

She walked away from him, to the center of the shed, and stood surrounded by the heaped and seeping ruins of Nightingale’s ambition. The vapors from it were heady, delicious. Of course Mark Harrigan would wish her fate on himself, but he had paid all his debts. Hers ran too deep, too red to cross off so easily. She had given too much of herself to the darkness.

In front of her, the spawn reared up, shrieking its fury.

Diana Stanley smiled her dreadful smile. “You should relax,” she told it. “Here. Have a drink.”

She drew back her arm. And let the bottle fly, to curl out a path of cleansing fire through the air.

Epilogue: The Blizzard and the Flame

Carolyn Fern awoke in a world of featureless white, as though she were buried in snow.

She lay for a long time, unable to move or speak. Around her, misty figures began to appear; blurry ghosts, their footsteps silent, their voices dulled into meaningless murmur. They gathered like clouds, eerie and unknowable, until they had surrounded her. All Carolyn could do was watch as they tilted, one by one, to study her with their eyeless, vaporous faces.

Finally, when their attentions had become almost unbearable, one reached down to slide cold metal onto her face. Her spectacles. And with her mind clearing and her sight restored Carolyn she saw that she was in a hospital ward, with clean linen sheets covering her body and tight white bandages around her left arm.

There was the sound of running feet. A small phalanx of doctors was hurrying forth to appraise her.

* * *

Carolyn had been unconscious for almost a month. Christmas was only three days away.

She had, according to the nurses, been brought in on the morning that Phillip Avery’s mansion burned down. A man in a long coat had carried her into the hospital just after dawn. He would not give his name, or say what had happened. Once he saw that Carolyn was being attended by doctors, he left.

He never come back.

“Do you remember him?” a nurse asked her later, plainly hopeful that one of that day’s mysteries might be solved at last. “Do you know his name?”

Carolyn’s voice was cracked and rusty from ill-use. But after a few seconds she was able to whisper that no, she did not remember the man. She did not remember anything about that day.

It was a lie, of course. But a useful one.

Over the next few days she employed it many times. She told it to her doctors, to the police, even to her family, until they eventually stopped asking her things and went away. This was exactly what Carolyn wanted. Their curiosity was nothing more than an unwelcome distraction, their concern an itch in the ear. For the moment, all she needed from them was silence, so she could keep on trying to piece together what had happened on the night Diana Stanley had died.

It was no easy task. Frustratingly, all that remained of her most recent memories were a scattering of broken images. Either through injury, or perhaps simply shock and distress, Carolyn’s brain had failed to process the night’s events into a coherent story. It was as though her mental faculties had stop-started through that horrible dawn, skipping like a scratched record. All that she had left to decipher were scraps.

She remembered the fire. That, Carolyn was certain, she would never be able to forget. It would be a fixed point in her memory until the day she died. Every window in the storage shed had erupted at once, every door bulged. The roof had lifted on a bed of flame and whirled apart, blazing debris whickering through the air to hammer and ignite the surrounding walls. She could still feel the punch it had dealt her, the wash of stinging heat over her skin. In an instant, the freezing dawn air had turned into a cauldron of smoke and pain.

Diana must have been incinerated in moments, but Carolyn could still remember trying to run back into the flames. When Harrigan had stopped her she had fought him, clawed and screamed and cursed. She had heard a lot of swearwords during her short career, and she had used every one of them. She could recall, quite clearly, the startled look on Harrigan’s smoke-blackened face as she had done so.

After that, things became even more scattered. There was the feeling of being bundled into a car, the smell of smoke and blood and leather seats. Vast flames, reflected in windshield glass. And, just before her battered and exhausted psyche took its final refuge in unconsciousness, she saw snow.

Autumn had finally lost its yearly battle with winter. Carolyn had seen the first fragile snowflakes spinning down into the automobile’s path, golden in the headlamp beams. They had looked like falling stars.

Heaven was burning, and all the myriad suns were tumbling down dead to Earth.

* * *

The snow had continued to fall as Spaulding House burned. Those first dying stars had quickly turned into a drifting torrent, spiraling down in eerie silence among the trees and the smoke and the whirling sparks. The heat of the fire banished it for a hundred yards all around the mansion, but outside that reach the snow laid its noiseless strata with frightening speed, the air so thick with flakes that it was an hour before anyone in Arkham saw the blaze and called the fire department. By then the track through the woods was obscured, and all the firemen could do was stand by their wagons and watch as the grand old house was devoured.

Later, there were rumors of strange colors amid the fire, of explosions of blue lightning and green gas, of a deafening, inhuman howling that continued for hours as the inferno raged. Some even spoke of vast ropes of blazing oil ripping up through the flames to whip and claw at the sky, but the people of Arkham were not fools. Such tales didn’t last long.

The snow fell continuously for three days. By the time the first rescue team managed to dig a path through it with shovels nothing remained of Spaulding House but a vast pit of ash and rubble. It took another five days before all the bodies were recovered, and by then any chance of identifying them was a matter of guesswork. It wasn’t even entirely certain how many there were.

Phillip Avery was mourned, but not for very long. Police searching the crater had discovered a vast haul of liquor bottles, warped and melted into a single amoebic mass by the fire’s heat, and once this wonder was made public any respect afforded to Avery’s memory vanished overnight. For the supposed war-hero to be revealed as a common bootlegger was bad enough, but to be so careless with one’s merchandise was simply beyond the pale.

Besides, most people in Arkham had other things to think about. More snow was falling. It was going to be a long, hard winter.

* * *

All things pass.

Wounds heal. Scars fade. Horror ceases to loom large in the memory: it recedes, turns its back, slouches reluctantly away into the darkest corners of the mind. Given enough respite, there comes a time when even the most haunted soul can lay down to sleep with the lights switched off. When the nightmares don’t come every night, but every other night, or when it rains, or when the liquor runs out.

Carolyn left hospital two weeks into the new year. It was far too early, she knew: she was still weak, exhausted, confused and a little bedsore. Her burned arm, although no longer painful, remained concealed beneath a tight covering of bandages. On the nights when she was able to sleep, she woke weeping.

Doctors, though, always make the worst patients. Carolyn just couldn’t lie still any more, no matter how much her body demanded it.

Once back in the world she tried to contact Mark Harrigan, several times, and each time she failed. He had never returned to his previous address, and Carolyn had no success in finding out where he had gone. Eventually she stopped trying. Either he had learned from her previous success at tracking him down, or his life after Arkham had taken a significantly darker turn than hers.

In either case, Carolyn’s inability to locate him was something of a turning point. It spelled the end of an episode in her life, a dreadful, loathsome time that would haunt her forever, but that was now over and complete. She could go back to her work, to her life. The monsters were gone.

Carolyn Fern was an intelligent woman. She should have known better.

* * *

It was warm, on the night everything changed. Late spring was giving way to summer, and the sky over Providence was open and clear. Stars were appearing, pin-sharp in the indigo heavens, and Carolyn’s drive back from the Institute had been lit silver-blue by a vast, rising moon, brighter in some spots than the yellow glow of streetlamps.

She pulled up outside her apartment block, switched off the car’s engine and then waited for a minute, looking carefully around. It was a habit she had grown into, ever since she had bought the vehicle. She had learned to spot patterns in the life of the street; which windows in the block were dark and which were lit, how many automobiles were parked close by and whether or not she recognized them. How many people were on the sidewalk. How they walked, where they looked, what they carried.

If she was honest, Carolyn would have to admit that she was probably a little paranoid.

Everything seemed normal. She got out of the car, tugging the sleeves of her blouse down to her wrists as she emerged. She always wore long sleeves when she went out, even when it was warm, to hide the place on her left arm where the oily thing had wrapped around her.

Carolyn had treated burned men, and knew what heat and chemicals could do to flesh. She had been lucky. Her burn had healed completely during that long winter, the ruins sloughing away beneath her bandages to be replaced by a whorl of new and almost flawless skin. Its only strangeness was pigmentation. The new flesh was as colorless as a corpse, but that was a small price to pay.

Privately, she wore the pale spiral as a trophy, as commemoration of a victory hard-won. In public, though, it was best to keep the place covered. It drew questions, and not ones she had any intention of answering.

She locked the car door, checking it by tugging firmly on the handle, then made her way inside.

Her apartment was two floors up, so she didn’t have many stairs to climb, but she was panting slightly when she reached her front door. Exertion still tired her. She paused there, key in hand, willing her heartbeat to slow. As soon as she went in she would have to deal with Rufus, and she needed her strength for that.

She slipped the key into the lock, turned it, and froze.

There had been no noise from within.

The door swung inwards slightly. Carolyn leaned towards it, heart racing again, listening hard at the gap. Rufus was her watchdog, a tan bullmastiff that she had bought from a dealer in Boston, and while his enthusiasms could be wearing he was a superlative guardian. To her knowledge he had never made a nuisance of himself while she was away at work, but had always greeted the sound of her key in the door with a thudding bark so deep and solid it felt like a blow to the chest.

Carolyn did not call out for the dog. His silence was warning enough. Instead she reached into her purse, pulled out the gun she kept there now, and eased her way into the apartment.

She padded forwards, mouth slightly open so her breathing would be quieter.

Her kitchen door was open. All the apartment lights were off, but moonlight was filtering in from the single window. Bright enough to see Rufus lying on his side on the tiles, quite still, and the man who crouched over him.

The man was big, clad in a dark suit and fedora. Carolyn saw his head come up, and she stepped quickly to the door, leveling the gun as she moved. It felt tiny in her fist; a twin-barreled Derringer, hardly long enough to see in the dark. It was loaded with rimfires that travelled so slowly she could probably watch them fly, but at this range its effects would be brutal. She had hollowed out the noses of the slugs herself.

“Get up,” she hissed, and pulled the hammer back.

The man turned his head. “Jesus, Doc, when did you start packing?”

Carolyn yelped, almost dropping the gun. “Harrigan?”

Behind him, Rufus moved and whined, lifting his blunt skull for more attention. Carolyn saw Harrigan ruffle the fur between the animal’s ears. She lowered the Derringer, using her free hand to let the hammer down slowly. “Thanks a lot, mutt. Some guard dog you turned out to be.”

“What can I tell you. He likes me.” Harrigan stood up, turned to face her. “Sorry Doc. Didn’t mean to scare you, but if I’d put the lights on you’d have called the cops without even coming in.”

“How do you know that?”

“That’s what I’d do.”

“No you wouldn’t.” She reached for the wall and flipped the light switch. Harrigan winced slightly as the bulb came on. He had been here a while, in the dark. “Did you break anything getting in?”

“No.”

“Damn.” It had been easy for him. She sagged back against the wall, watching as Rufus hauled himself up and trotted past her out of the kitchen. “Mark, it’s been months. What the hell am I supposed to say?”

“How about ‘Hello’?” He took his hat off, put it down by the sink. His hair was cut very short, almost cropped back to his skull, and there was a new scar running from just under his right eye to his chin. It didn’t look old. “Carolyn, I wouldn’t have come here if it wasn’t important. You don’t deserve the kind of trouble I haul around.”

“Deciding that for myself would have been nice, Mr. Harrigan.”

“I know.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Look, just read this.”

He held it out. She blinked at it for a moment or two, then reached out and took it from him, spread it and held it up to the light.

It was a telegram, Western Union. Dated two days previously.

DARLING + AM TAKING THE SEA AIR AT INNSMOUTH + CHARMING TOWN + INTERESTING CUISINE + THE FISH IS TO DIE FOR + PICK UP CAROLYN AND JOIN ME FOR A HOLIDAY + WILL BE JUST LIKE OLD TIMES + ALICE

“That’s impossible,” said Carolyn, her voice very small and high.

“It’s her, isn’t it?” Harrigan took the telegram back from her and folded it again. “I don’t know anyone else who talks like that.”

“No. It can’t be. She’s dead. She burned.”

But Diana had told no one else about her proposed new name. Just Carolyn, in the little second bedroom in Wilmarth’s place. Alice. Like the book. “She couldn’t have gotten out. Could she?”

He looked away. “Before I got that, I would have said no chance. Place went up like a bomb. But I guess, if anyone could…”

“Maybe she didn’t. Maybe it’s a trap.” Carolyn hugged herself. The apartment felt very small. “God, Mark, I thought this was over. But it’s never going to be over, is it?”

“No,” said Harrigan, reaching up unconsciously to brush the scar on his cheek. “It’s not.”

An emptiness had appeared behind Carolyn’s ribs, a cold yawning feeling, as if she was standing somewhere very high, with nothing to hold onto and only immeasurable darkness below. As if she had been in a boat for a very long time, bobbing on a calm sea, and had suddenly realized that nothing separated her from the black depths but a few slender planks.

The world was not as she had once thought it. There was no solidity to it, no weight, no safety. It was a membrane, a bubble’s quivering shell, and behind that shell alien insects mined and plotted. A titan crouched in a cavern as big as a world, fed sacrifice by splashes of living oil, its miles of rank and stinking hide seething with the Feeders from Within.

And past those sights, more nightmares, each one worse than she could imagine.

This would never end. She had been a fool, thinking that her life could go back to the way it was. Arkham’s horror had marked her. It had her scent now, and she would be a part of it forever. There was nothing she could do. No matter where she ran, where she hid, it would find her.

In which case, thought Carolyn Fern grimly, running and hiding were no longer an option.

She lifted her arm and drew back her sleeve. The spiral of white skin stretched around her arm from elbow to wrist, smooth and strange and wonderful. Her battle scar. “Innsmouth. That’s up in Essex, right?”

“I guess.”

“South of Plum Island?”

“So I hear.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “We’ll need a car. Something bigger than mine. Give me an hour—I’ll need to pack my things, get some books together. You’ve still got your suitcase?”

“Wouldn’t be without it.”

“Great. Oh, and I’d better telephone Professor Armitage.”

“Henry?” Harrigan frowned. “What for?”

She looked up at him, and smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. In fact, the last person she had seen wearing one like it was presently in Innsmouth, no doubt sharpening some awful knife while waiting for her telegram to bear fruit.

“Because,” said Carolyn Fern, “if we’re going hunting, I’m going to need someone to feed my dog.”

The End

About the Author

Peter J. Evans was born in southern England and has been there ever since, although not entirely by choice. His first exposure to the Mythos was at college, when he saw a fellow student with a copy of the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game and wanted to know how the title was pronounced. He is still waiting for a straight answer.

Evans wrote his first novel in 1999. Since then he has completed nine more that the world knows about, and an undisclosed number that must never see the light of day. During daylight hours he does something terribly complicated involving navigational radar, while at night he listens to Japanese pop songs and writes horror stories. He has heard of sleep, but only as an abstract concept.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter One: Old Wounds

Chapter Two: Affairs of the Heart

Chapter Three: Hidden Depths

Chapter Four: Uplifted

Chapter Five: Paper Chase

Chapter Six: The Vanishing

Chapter Seven: Book Smart

Chapter Eight: Fear of Flying

Chapter Nine: Razor Blade Smile

Chapter Ten: Hush

Chapter Eleven: The Other Woman

Chapter Twelve: Across the Eons

Chapter Thirteen: Apotheosis

Chapter Fourteen: The Rabbit Hole

Chapter Fifteen: The Road to Hell

Chapter Sixteen: Rise and Shine

Chapter Seventeen: Endgame

Epilogue: The Blizzard and the Flame

About the Author