The Weird Company Read online

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

  “But Lawrence . . .”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER 6

  From the Account of Robert Martin Olmstead

  “The Case of Francis Paul Wilson”

  I. The Redemption of Dr. Hartwell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  It was with some trepidation that I moved into the dimly lit room. It had been years since I had last seen him. He had once been my partner, Hartwell and Wilson had been one of the finest medical practices in Arkham. That all changed when his wife succumbed to the outbreak of Spanish Influenza, and in his grief he demanded that I bring her back. While I had been serving in the Great War, Wilson had discovered that I had been experimenting with a formula, a reagent that could work on the tissues of the recently departed and restore them to life. Under duress, I prepared this reagent and administered it to Mary. It took time, but Mary finally returned, but when she came back, she wasn’t right; she was violent, enraged. As she tore through the house she snapped Wilson’s neck, killing him instantly. I of course brought him back. What had brought back Mary wrong, worked almost perfectly on Wilson. The only noticeable effects had been a slight crook in his neck, and a limp. What would have been unnoticeable would have been something common to all those who had benefitted from my reagent: Wilson would have been extremely resistant to infection, and any physical wounds would have had little effect on the man. His constitution and recuperative powers would have been beyond measure. In my experience, only the wholesale destruction of Wilson’s body, through fire or dissolution in acid, would create a wound beyond his ability to heal. With this knowledge I knew that whatever had happened to Wilson must have been traumatic indeed.

  In the poor light there was little to see. The room was little more than a cell with a single weak lamp providing a minimum of illumination, and a radio playing some static-laced music, both of which rested on a low side table. Against the wall was a simple wooden chair, and there in the far corner, barely illuminated by the dim bulb, I could make out the face of my one-time friend Francis Wilson. As I moved the chair to sit by his side, it was obvious to me that my suspicions had been correct. Something traumatic had happened to Wilson. Most of his body lay hidden by blankets or in the darkness, but his face, shoulder and arm were pale and wasted. As I sat, his hand reached out and I took it. He was cold, barely warmer than the room. His sunken eyes filled with tears as his cracked lips opened and he weakly said my name and apologized in the same breath. I held his hand tightly and told him he had nothing to apologize for.

  We sat there for some time in silence, for I knew that whatever had happened there were few people in the world who could understand it, and fewer still that might be able to offer help. That is, if there was any help to be offered. Eventually, I broke the silence. “If I am going to help you, I have to know what happened.” At this he attempted to withdraw his hand, but I held it tight, insistently, demanding that he not break the physical link between us.

  “I’ve written it down.” His voice was strange, hollow, like the wind blowing through a log. He spoke, softly, slowly, deliberately, as if it was a strain to form even a single word, and gestured toward the side table. I nodded, trying to be patient with the man, and then retrieved the stack of pages from the table. It was a handwritten manuscript, on white stationary, but unusually stained in places with a brown ochre that hinted at something dreadful. The dim light made reading slightly difficult, but for the sake of my friend I undertook the task. I still remember the contents as if the paper were in front of me now.

  II. The Account of Dr. Wilson

  It is in desperation that I write this, for I know that my current condition, a result of a regrettable incident, as Doctor Lynn prefers to refer to it, requires some explanation. Although to be honest there are few in this world who would not consider these words, this statement, anything but the ravings of a lunatic. But if you couple these pages with what has happened to me, to what I have become, what then? Who can deny my account of what happened? Who would dare suggest anything else?

  I had been living in northern New Jersey, in a small coastal community, a horrid barren place of sandy soils and sparse thin grass. Few people lived there, and those who did preferred to keep to themselves. It was the perfect place to lose one’s self, to wallow in self pity and try to forget the past. I stayed there for years, isolated, alone and content in my own way. Had I not ventured out for supplies, had I not taken the coastal road, I would never have met the young Miss Nora Forrest, never have examined her twisted ankle, never been asked to accompany her to Manhattan, and never have been recommended for a position at the Whitmarsh Institute. It is a banal place, encompassing everything I always hated about the practice of medicine. A summer place, where nervous men and women with a touch of hypochondria come to fritter away their days and allow doctors to preen over them. During the season, they come in droves to take in the island, to walk its gardens and lanes, to stroll on the beaches, and eat the fresh oysters. This place swarms with such people in the summer. After September though, the institute is nearly empty. Only a few residents, those whose families have paid to not see them, like the Mad Mrs. Tanzer and the infirm Mr. Meikle, and a minimum of staff, stay behind. The island in winter is not kind. The wind turns bitter and biting, and sets the bay churning. The ferry runs just one day a week, and even the bay men don’t dare venture too far from home, by sea or land. In a word, the place in winter can be considered quite isolated. It is a perfect place to hide, or even lose someone. For me, it seemed an improvement. I could remain isolated and nearly anonymous, and still be paid a decent wage.

  I had spent two summers and the winter between them, and was working on a second when Senior Physician Dr. Willett brought in a new client. It was late in th
e evening of March 8 that the car arrived. It was quite unexpected, for the bay was in a treacherous state. That the ferryman had risked it suggested that Willett had paid him well, and that this was no ordinary patient. He was a young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, tall, slim, and fair. His clothing was well-tailored, but disheveled, and his hair was wild and unkempt. It seemed that the man had been sickly for quite some time, for his skin had a sallow pallor about it and hung thinly on his frame. As part of his admission process I and Willett examined the man, while the others, Peck, Lyman and Waite, looked on. All of us were astonished by what we found. The man’s skin was dry, and abnormally cool. His breathing and cardiac rhythms were curiously out of synchronization, and his physical response to nervous stimuli bore no relation to anything thought normal. Willett, who was apparently the man’s family physician, made note of the absence of an olive birthmark on the man’s hip, and the presence of a great black scar on his chest. Additionally, the old doctor made much of a small pit in the flesh above the man’s right eye.

  Willett refused to reveal the man’s name, and instead insisted he be addressed as Mr. Pulver. At this the man sniggered softly, and Willett chastised him, suggesting that he keep honor in mind and prevent any scandal from besmirching the family name. To this idea the sickly man reluctantly nodded. The head orderly Sammons led Pulver to his room while Willett and I discussed the case over coffee. The senior physician made it clear that when Pulver was in his room, the door was to be locked. He could have the run of the common rooms and gardens, during normal hours, but only under supervision by Sammons or one of the other orderlies. Under no circumstances was he to be left alone. Such talk made me question whether the man should be confined to a straightjacket, but Willett rejected the idea, and suggested that in his opinion, Mr. Pulver was not a danger to himself or others, but, I could take appropriate action if anything suggested otherwise.