Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute

a boy who has smashed the atom, and the school with it. ‘You mean to say, we shall have to break into somewhere?’

‘No,’ said Cabal. Then he thought for a moment longer and added, ‘Yes. But no.’

‘Are you being deliberately obscure, Cabal?’ said Corde, his smile fading.

‘Partially, but – pace, gentlemen – the answer is obscure in itself. Explaining it will . . . Suffice it to say that you hired me for my ability to deal with certain situations with a certain professionalism. I must ask you to trust me when I say that this is one such situation. I could give you a more exact answer, but in doing so I would endanger the success of the mission. You must trust me.’

And so, with ill-grace but no alternative, they did.

Oxford has its dreaming spires, and Paris its lights and love, but neither place exerts quite the same influences upon the poetic and susceptible as Arkham, the city of shadows. Shadows, literal and figurative, that lie upon the homes and upon the minds of that strange town’s inhabitants. By European standards, of course, Arkham was a new town, not even half a millennium old, yet an air of ancient decrepitude had fallen upon the place scarcely after the first house was raised that baffled expectations and raised the hackles.

The land on which it had been built had been bought from the indigenes for the usual trinkets, but in this case there had rapidly grown an unspoken suspicion that the former owners had got the better part of the deal. At first glance, there was nothing wrong with the land: it stood green and promising, rising gently from the sullen waters of the Miskatonic river that ran through it. Plots were quickly drawn up and dispersed, and eager settlers arrived to make new lives there. Soon, however, their eagerness tarnished and faded, replaced by an uncertain feeling that all was not well. But the land was good, and the location perfect, and practicality overcame vague doubts. Soon, other settlements were established, like Kingsport to the south-east, Innsmouth to the east, and Dunwich inland to the west. Soon after, the rumours began.

The whole region seemed indefinably tainted. Bad things happened. Brutality, drunkenness and petty crime stained the reputations of the towns, but there were whispers of worse things still. Witchcraft was afoot in Arkham, incest in Dunwich, murder and cannibalism in Innsmouth went the gossip. The towns seemed mired in degeneration and sin against which the burghers had no recourse. But then the witch hunters came from nearby Salem, and cleansed by fire and rope. Though they killed only the hapless innocent in Salem, nobody ever made such claims for Arkham or her near neighbours. Here, the self-styled inquisitors saw things that assured them of their righteous cause, even while it shook their faith in a benevolent God.

And so, Arkham and Innsmouth and the others were saved from the atavistic blight, all was light and joy, and evil ne’er again haunted these places. Certainly, that was the impression the towns were keen to convey, if only to save themselves all that bother again, and – in common with the best self-fulfilling prophecies – that was how things seemed. Some carried this feat with more assuredness than others: Arkham became home to the popular and renowned Miskatonic University, which in turn attracted learned and artistic communities to the town; Kingsport grew lean and ascetic, as though time had lost interest in it, thereby holding the twin illnesses of decay and progress from its door. Innsmouth, however, kept its secrets and grew cunning in that keeping, while Dunwich just rotted amid its fields like an unharvested pumpkin.

But it is Arkham that claims our interest, amid its quaint old-world houses and its famous university, which, if not quite Ivy League, still brings to mind things that climb and creep.

The vast majority of Arkhamites are pleased with their town in many respects. It is architecturally interesting, it has a good university, it is pleasantly placed, and if it has some small historical opprobria attached to its name, then these have mellowed through time to lend nothing more than a delicious notoriety to the town. In this last matter, the vast majority of Arkhamites are deluded.

Arkham lies in a region of reality where the weft and warp have worn dangerously thin. Here, people may think things they ought not, see things they ought not, and be seen by things that ought not be. There are those within the town who know of these facts, and who willingly research into them, either for purposes of knowledge, protection or, most frequently, personal power. It is a perilous path, and few survive it intact, either spiritually or physically, those who reach the end finding that the prize is rarely worth the cost. As they suffer and die and suffer some more, beyond the thin veil there are dark shapes that gibber and pipe, and one voice laughs and never stops.

Yet there are always more who come to try to draw the veil aside. Which suits the dark shapes, for they know a secret that was ancient long before even amoebae floated in the primordial oceans of Earth. An ancient truth that sings throughout this universe and the others that crowd around it, a secret that may be expressed in words as ‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’

One such sucker was Eldon Harwell, a young man recently dropped out of – before he could be sent down from – Miskatonic University. Eldon’s path into moral disintegration had begun when he had attended a showing at the Pickman Gallery on the corner of Pickman and West. It had been a poorly attended affair, and Harwell had been quite full of nibbles and cheap white wine when the proprietor had taken a shine to him, and invited him to see the ‘private’ collection after the public showing was concluded. Drunk and bored, Harwell had readily agreed, hopeful that the collection would be sufficiently debauched to please the jaded senses of a citizen of Eldersburg, Maryland, such as himself.

Harwell, as a former undergraduate, was confident of his worldliness, but what he saw behind the threadbare velvet curtain kicked open several doors in his psyche that would better have remained locked. He was, for example, familiar with the theory if not the practice of bestiality, but the beautiful – and in pure aesthetic terms, in ratio and technique, in application and style, it was beautiful – painting of women sporting with hounds unsettled him more than he had expected. First in the recognition that the hounds were not exactly hounds and, later when he thought back, the realisation that the women were not exactly women.

He slept badly that night, and when exasperation finally drove him from his bed, he looked out from his garret room across the junction of Lich Street and Peabody Avenue. There lay Arkham Cemetery, shadowed and silvered by the light of a gibbous moon that seemed to leer down upon the silent, empty scene.

But, no! What was that? In the corner of the burial ground, through the ivy-twined railings, he caught a glimpse of movement between the gravestones. It paused, as if aware of him, then stepped out into the cold moonlight, and he saw that it was a dog, only a dog.

And then it looked up at him, and rose on to its hind legs, and it walked like a man.

He awoke the next morning on the floor, a bump at the back of his head where it had struck the floor when he fell, fainting. This was a small blessing, as it allowed him to reorder the disordered events of the night in a form that caused him less distress. He had risen, and tripped in the darkness, banging his head in the fall. This had caused a horrible nightmare triggered by the paintings he had seen. There had been no dog in the graveyard. There had been no dog.

He was lying to himself and, in his heart, he knew it. What he did not know was he could never be the same