Virgil Peters—January 1949:
In the private reading room on the second floor of Miskatonic’s restricted section, George Barlow paces. I can tell he’s thinking hard; I hope he thinks up something useful. I’m turning over last night’s failed inventory equation—last night’s sabotage—for the tenth time, trying to find the flaw. Amnesic shadows occlude the whole evening. I can’t recall enough to make a difference, no matter how I struggle against the fog. There’s little I can do for Mary until my turn to read aloud.
Sally Ward, the kid who begged to join us, is up now. She stumbles over words as she reads, face ashen—her first taste of the eldritch has become a trial by fire.
Eldritch, that’s Barlow’s term. Stranger than strange.
I’ve always known we needed Mary. I could tell she had smarts from the day Barlow brought her on: a secretary who could tidy up a calculation as well as a letter. But it’s hitting me now just how much our work relies on her. We’d all be happier with that skill intact and unspoken, her most of all. Whether or not Spector’s irregulars gave her this impossible wound, I’d gladly strangle them for it. Or better yet, strangle a cure out of them. I remember moments out of context, ghost-like: the lot of them standing amid our sketches and figures, shouting.
She wasn’t crying, when we found her in the office this morning. She was meticulously examining every book, every page of notes she could find. She asked us so calmly, for each one, whether we still saw letters, whether the nonsense chicken scratches were on the page or in her mind. She looks calm now, holding up a hand to silence Sally, dictating notes to the girl’s callow boyfriend. The hand goes down; Sally’s strained voice goes on. Barlow drops into a chair to scribble notes of his own.
Rustling at the doorway. Goddamned Spector standing there, bland as you please, his “irregulars” crowding behind him. George jumps to his feet, already reaching for his gun.
“Ron,” he says. “I can’t believe you’d bring these people here now, of all times.” I can believe it. The man has no shame, no true loyalty to keep him in line. He does what he pleases, and sticks his big nose in everything. It’d be fine if he knew what he was doing, but he’s never understood the things we study. The laws that folklorists are pleased to call magic, he sees only as myths to motivate fascists.
“I’m here to help,” says Spector, as if he hadn’t dragged along the people who caused the problem in the first place.
For once, George doesn’t put up with his bullshit. “You’ve made it clear, you won’t even admit to yourself that you’re harboring saboteurs. And you,” he adds to the bitch of a professor that Spector’s added to his stable. “I’ll have your head for however you convinced the guards to let you by.”
(I try to be a gentleman to women, even in the privacy of my mind. I make an exception for the ones who’ve tried to violate that privacy and control my thoughts—yet another time Mary’s work protected us. If Dr. Trumbull pushes her way in today, she’ll get an earful.)
“We came in the back door,” says Miss Marsh. Speaking of women it’s hard to think well of. I’ve seen her family’s files. I don’t believe for a moment she counts herself as American, and Spector’s a fool to trust her. “And we came now, of all times, to help. As Mr. Spector said.”
George jerks his chin at me, as good as a direct order. I pick a target as I start to move—Miss Marsh is the ringleader, and by how she stands she’s no trained fighter. I twist her wrists behind her back, and shove my free arm against her thick neck. Muscle tenses against me, where I would’ve expected a pad of fat; her pulse pounds against my skin. As my thinking mind catches up with my fighting mind, I remember more about her family and realize she’s stronger than I credited.
And there’s her brother close by, deceptively lanky as she is thick, looking terrified and murderous. Her head moves fractionally against me, a gesture that might carry as much menacing authority as George’s nod. I drag her back, glaring, hoping her followers don’t call my bluff.
Spector raises his hands. “Don’t make this mistake again, George. My people aren’t responsible for your problems, and you have two women hurt.”
And all I can think, too busy to look at either Mary or Sally—Sally, who I assumed was just feeling the strain of her first working gone sour—is: two?
* * *
Until Barlow’s arrival, there was little to do but fret. I would have preferred to fret at the elders, not to mention give them warning, but while we’d traveled by train they had only their own muscles and sea-mounts to carry them up the coast. They wouldn’t be in summoning range for at least another day, even if the currents ran fair.
Spector, under no such limitation, disappeared for the day to appease his own family for the vacation cut short. The rest of us found a nearby park, away from the gossips at Tante Leah’s, and tried to unearth recollections of the hill-dwelling aliens. Neko and Audrey played interlocutors, asking questions that they hoped would prompt me or Trumbull to come up with more detail. For the most part this was entirely unsuccessful. After a while, Neko began keeping score, marking in her notebook a point for every query that drew a real answer, but if it was a game we were clearly losing. Charlie and Caleb speculated fruitlessly as to what the Outer Ones might want with the missing. I swore that on our next genealogical expedition, we’d leave someone at Miskatonic who could be telegrammed with urgent research tasks. Trumbull disparaged the city’s collections. Apparently nothing from NYU to the massive public library with its guardian lions held so much as a Necronomicon.
Late that evening, Caleb caught me alone in the corner of the common room. “Did you know he’d bring them in?”
I closed my eyes. “I knew it was a risk. I didn’t see any other way. Are you going to castigate me for it?”
“No.” He voice sounded too even, strained over some unreleasable emotion. “I want to know if you think we should leave.”
“Leave New York?” I searched his face for despair or anger or a shift in his ordinary background of bitterness. I found, instead, doubt.
“Of course not. This boardinghouse of Spector’s. Deedee and I could take a draft from the bank, and stay at any hotel we cared to, without anyone squinting and trying to eavesdrop whenever we walked through the lobby. We could pick a place at random; that would make it harder for them to find us. We could try to track down Freddy before the feds do—maybe even get these aliens out of the way before that ass Barlow decides they’re Russians in rubber suits.” The plan fell from his lips in a rush, his breathing at the end short and shallow.
It was tempting. The thought of meeting Barlow and Peters again made me shudder. I carried enough painful memories that I couldn’t afford to flee for shudders alone, but these people were a real danger to our family. At best, they thought us an artifact of another generation’s threats—the last remnants of the deadly cults that had supposedly plagued the ’20s. At worst, they believed us an ally of this generation’s threats. And whatever we did, they saw as proof.
Yet the thought of investigating on our own frightened me as well. “If we hide from Barlow’s team, they’ll be hidden from us as well. And they’d find our cousin first. We’re lost trying to find him on our own, we’ve already said so.”
“I know. Oh, void, Aphra, I don’t know at all.” He pulled a cigarette from his pocket, twitched the unlit stick between his fingers. “They’re dangerous to work with, and dangerous to hide from. If they get to the Outer Ones before we do, they could start a war. I don’t know how we could stop one even if we were there. And what they’d do if they walked in on Freddy with gills half-formed, I don’t want to think about. It might be worth staying close, just to be first in that door by half a second.”
“I … yes. And if they try some spectacularly stupid spell, there’s a chance we could talk them out of it, or warn Spector. New York’s … there are a lot of people here. I don’t think Mary would make the same mistake twice, but even she seems attached to looking for new ones.” And the kind of cold, unearthly creature that had tried to consume us at Miskatonic would find richer and denser prey in the city. “I hate to say it, but let’s work with them for now. Cautiously. We can strike out on our own if things go really sour.”
Late in the afternoon the following day, Spector reappeared. Today’s suit was darker, crisper, and more clearly armor. “They’re here,” he said. “You should come meet them.”
* * *
On the train, I spoke to Nyarlathotep. You can pray to any of the gods, but with Nyarlathotep, traditionally, you also converse—and you prepare not to like, or understand, the answers.
You offer people what they ask for, however dangerous. I begged for help in our search, and you sent it. If you are the one who tempts Barlow with dangerous knowledge, if he is your fool, so be it. But please, lead him to dance the cliff’s edge as far as possible from my family.
I might have been less selfish, and asked the Thousand-Faced God to guide Barlow away from anyone who might be hurt. I might have begged for Freddy’s safety. But It rarely rewards broad altruism. Nyarlathotep is patron of forbidden knowledge and dangerous journeys and many other things, but self-love and specificity run through all of them.
Barlow’s hotel reminded me not at all of the Gilman. The lobby was velvet and crystal, the staff uniformed and vigilant.
“Don’t you have a local office?” asked Caleb.
“Not where we could talk freely about this case,” said Spector. “And while George isn’t afraid to sleep on the ground, he doesn’t turn down luxury if it’s on offer, either.”
In the elevator, I braced myself. The young negro man in his gold-buttoned scarlet flicked cold eyes across our motley group. I sent another quick prayer to Nyarlathotep, that this test might not be too onerous—and then, thinking better, prayed instead to Cthulhu for patience. The Sleeping God rarely offers help, and so offers the most reliable comfort.
Mary Harris answered the door, of course: still playing secretary on a cursory level. She greeted us politely, but reserved a brilliant smile for Trumbull. “Catherine! I hoped you’d be along.”
The two exchanged an enthusiastic handclasp, and were already deep in mathematical esoterica as Mary led us to where the others sat. The absurdly large room gave them time for such equationing. Abundant open space framed the carven and upholstered furniture. Doors suggested private bedrooms discreetly tucked away, but Barlow’s team seemed to have unpacked most of their materials in the common area. They’d hung a map on the wall, and a chalkboard. Another slate lay on the floor, marked up with unfamiliar symbols, but no magic seemed to be in process. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
Despite Mary’s enthusiastic greeting of her one-time collaborator, I noticed that their descent into technical camaraderie gave her an excellent excuse not to meet anyone else’s eyes.
Nor did her own enthusiasm cover for her teammates’ lack. Barlow nodded at Caleb, a bare civility. “Ron tells me your cousin is among our missing.”
Caleb glanced at me. “Frederick Laverne,” I confirmed. “His mother didn’t report his disappearance.”
“Why not?” asked Peters. “Is he involved with something?”
Barlow put his hand out, palm down, discouraging this line of questioning. “Mr. Marsh. Miss Marsh. We’ll be glad to hear what you know about the boy, but there’s no reason for you to take part in our investigation. And plenty of reason for you not to.”
“George, I’ve already told you—” began Spector, but subsided when Barlow made the same gesture at him. The reflex of their past collaboration showed.
I swallowed both the fear Barlow’s presence raised and the instinct to defer, or to defend myself. He had no right to judge us. “Mr. Spector works with us for a reason, Mr. Barlow, and we with him. He assures us that you’re good at finding people, and I’m willing to take his word for it. Why won’t you take his word for our skills?”
“It’s not your skills that worry me.”
Mary put a hand on Barlow’s arm. “Mr. Barlow. I trust both their skills and their willingness to cooperate when they say they will. And really, would you rather have them running around investigating independently? You know they will.”
Peters snorted. “If you’re worried about another Detroit, that’s a pretty poor recommendation.”
“I’m not saying that.” She smiled, ducking her head. “Just that you can’t ask people not to help their own families, not and have it stick. I want to hear what they think about these Mi-Go.”
Deedee pulled out a chair, sat gracefully. She smiled at Barlow, eyes downcast, and I saw the choreography plain in her movements and Mary’s. “Mi-Go?”
“That’s one of the names they’re known by,” said Mary. “Outer Ones is another. Old Folk. They’re supposedly behind the legends of fairies, but they don’t look much like Elsie Wright’s photographs. Mr. Peters, would you mind finding one of the illustrations?”
Peters didn’t look pleased, but he took a clothbound volume from one of their stacks, and opened it to a marked page. There lay sketched my childhood recollection: crablike claws, overarched with bat wings fading to fog at the edges, and an eyeless head covered with irregular protuberances like some exotic fungus. Barlow retrieved a folder from across the room. Inside, another drawing in a more formal style: where the book showed the creature poised for flight and clutching some device in its foremost claws, the folder showed it splayed as if ready for dissection. I suppressed a shudder. The two figures could have been drawn from the same verbal description, but the details were all different: the folder showed the head rounder and the protuberances more varied, the placement of the claws completely different and more lobster-like than crab-like.
“This one’s a composite,” said Barlow, tapping the folder. “From reports a few years back of bodies seen in a flooding river. No corpses were found, of course, and it was dismissed at the time as mass hysteria.” Mary’s eyes tracked his finger. Her gaze passed over the drawing and back to us.
“Mass hysteria,” she said, “usually means someone’s worked hard to convince people that they didn’t see anything.”
The scene in front of me slipped further into focus: Barlow, trying to pretend that he and Caleb were in charge; Mary and Deedee, trying to let him. That might be the best way to get work done, but I couldn’t imagine keeping up the pretense. Innsmouth women might deck themselves in gold for a man’s pleasure, recite passages of lore to show off their learning, or cultivate an interest in stories about fishing expeditions. But my mother had never taught me how to efface myself to bolster male self-importance—nor had my father taught any need for it. Kezia Marsh was born from one of the family’s foremost branches, and Silas Marsh’s branch, though distant, had honor of its own. When one of them deferred to the other, they gave precedence openly and honestly.
“We’ve had an uptick in sightings over the past couple of months, all along the Berkshires and White Mountains,” said Barlow. “Clusters in the vicinity of disappearances, cutting off after each one. Even a few possible cases here in New York, though they’re pretty vague.”
“I hate this city,” added Peters. “One of these monsters could walk down Fifth Avenue, and people would only report if it stopped traffic.”
Barlow shrugged. “Once we dig a little, we’ll find more. Speaking of which, Mr. Marsh…”
Again, Caleb bent his head in my direction—this time with the slight smirk that suggested he was on the edge of swooning against me and calling me “sister dear.” So he’d seen it too. I toyed with the idea of explaining the concept of “eldest-on-land” to Barlow’s team, just to forestall my brother’s mockery. But then, Caleb’s way of playing into assumptions might be safer than forcing them to see their error.
“I’ll tell you about our cousin,” I said. “And what little we know about these creatures.”
I spoke, balancing safety and the need to share our knowledge with every word. Some judgments were easy: even Spector acknowledged that it would be disastrous for them to know about the Yith, so I glossed over the source of Trumbull’s insights. The Lavernes were harder. Spector had already mentioned their existence, and I couldn’t blame him. Their situation might offer clues to the other missing people. It seemed less likely, now, that Freddy had holed up somewhere to let his gills grow in. But his family’s history, as much as we knew, cast Innsmouth in poor light. We’d bled for such stories.
Among my own people, I’d happily criticize the ill treatment of air-born lovers. But I said only that the Lavernes were long-lost cousins. And that we wanted, very badly, to bring Freddy back to his mother.
Then there were the Outer Ones themselves. The Yith were legends to my people, something close to gods. Their archives would preserve Earth’s memory long after the sun burned out. And for the sake of that preservation, they destroyed entire races and stole their own children’s lives. They cared little for the petty politics of centuries, but would casually wipe out anyone who tried to restrain their field expeditions—or who simply made themselves inconvenient. Barlow’s team, though they didn’t recall it, had escaped with relatively light wounds.
But the Outer Ones were sketches and rumor. I didn’t know what they held sacred, what goal could have motivated these disappearances, or whether the creatures would care about attention from human authorities. I had no idea what kind of threat they might pose. And so nothing told me whether the greater danger came from Barlow knowing less, or more. I shared what I could, and hoped it wouldn’t bring disaster.
As I finished, Barlow tapped an arrhythmia on the table, frowning. “Is that all?”
“That’s all any of us can recall right now. If we were at Miskatonic, we could do better research.” And in a day, two at the outside, we’d consult with our elders. But I hadn’t mentioned their impending arrival.
Peters prodded the book. “This says they’re from ‘space that is not space.’ I suppose we could ask Dr. Einstein what that means. But it’s probably why they don’t show up in photos—unless they just break cameras to avoid anyone getting a clear shot. They supposedly have outposts in deserted hillsides and mountains around the globe. And somewhere called ‘Yuggoth’ on the outskirts of the solar system, which everyone assumes is Pluto.”
“I’ve heard of Yuggoth too,” I said, and then wished I hadn’t. I knew Yuggoth only from poetry and mysticism, irrelevant to our search and inappropriate to share with this company. But they looked at me expectantly. “Just stories. It’s where the gods first came to our solar system, before settling on Earth.” Strange towers and curious lapping rivers, labyrinths of wonder and low vaults of light, and bough-crossed skies of flame …
“We don’t need legends,” said Barlow. “We need descriptions of what they’re made of. Something unique, like blood type or chemical composition.”
“I still think I could track them without that,” said Mary. “We could tailor a talisman to search for anything outside the normal material range for this area.”
“I’ve seen your ‘general’ spells,” said Caleb. “You’re not trying that again with our cousin in the way.”
To my surprise, Barlow nodded. “Mr. Marsh is crass as usual, but we still don’t know what went wrong with that inventory, or how vulnerable any generally targeted equation could be to interference.” He cast a perfunctory glare across Trumbull. “Leaving aside, for the moment, the question of where such interference might come from.”
Peters followed Barlow’s gaze, and his expression turned predatory. “Ah, Professor. Maybe you could find a creature from another world with one of your mental tricks? Compel them to cooperate?”
“That’s not how it works,” said Trumbull. She kept her expression bland. Yet another thing I hadn’t considered: of course Barlow and his team would want to make use of her demonstrated abilities. Or rather, the abilities her Yithian guest had taken back to the Archives when they left. Barlow’s team still didn’t know, and would hopefully never know, that the woman in front of them wasn’t the person they’d sparred with at Miskatonic. I sought a distraction both from the question of Trumbull’s mentalism and from Mary’s dangerous taste in spell design.
Our own magic was rooted in self-knowledge—good for understanding and affecting others, but not for finding people yet unmet. Summoning without a clear target, in addition to being wildly dangerous, was useless against an unfriendly subject. An unwelcome call could usually be refused. Even an irresistible call couldn’t prevent friends and allies from following behind to firmly discourage future summons.
I thought again of the cryptic presence I’d encountered my first night in the city. I still had no evidence that it was an Outer One—but if it was, it meant that they made their mark across dimensions. Even if I was wrong, anomalies well-camouflaged in the waking world might still be easier to track in others.
“Do any of you know how to dreamwalk?” I asked.