The Missing Professor— Episode One

Somewhere outside Arkham, Massachusetts. — 1938

“I remember when you died.”

Charred flesh.

Sand.

Gloves.

His skull throbbed.

“You thought about Arkham Sanitarium?” Jackson. But not quite.

“He’s my brother,” she said. “He’s all I have left.”

Slaughterhouse? Old shit and blood. Sticky, thick in his nostrils.

Fists landing. Sharp pain.

Lashing out. Curling under heavy boots.

Darkness.

It was coming at him like the tide. Each creamed swell getting closer. He could smell the sour booze.

Something scuffed against the floor. He tried to open his eyes to see, but they wouldn’t cooperate. His face ached from the cold floor. Or was it from the fists?

Rough sawn boards threatened to drive splinters into his fingers.

He remembered.

The mill. The cult. Cody. But how did he get back here?

His mouth hurt. He probed with his tongue until something shifted loose. He reached in and pulled out a molar. Somebody had worked him over good. He tasted rotten pennies.

Dark out. Dragged into the barn. Heavy punch to the gut. Knees hit the floor. Blinding pain in his jaw.

The scuffing sound again. Rat?

“I remember when you died.” The words knifed through him. Cody’s words, but not his voice.

Sand covered most of the kitchen floor. Carefully drawn runes —like the ones from the mill — spiraled across the boards. Not in a circle. Scattered. Like thoughts that wouldn’t cooperate.

His body felt like the burning beam had landed on him, not Darla. Wait...

“Jackson… he’s not getting better. His fingers…” Darla stared down at her hands, then back to him. “I kept smelling something burning. I thought maybe it was the neighbor’s apartment. But look...”

The struggle was titanic, but he managed to force one of his eyes open.

He looked around the old wood structure. Beams surrounded him, but they were wrong. It was too small. Debris was scattered and half the roof was torn away. This couldn’t be the mill. It burned to the ground. He had burned it down. The memories, like crashing waves, slammed into the rocks of his mind, loud and brutal.

Not the mill. Not Danvers Pointe.

Hyde.

The world started spinning. He closed his eye.

“No. I haven’t considered Arkham. And I won’t.”

Tears welled in her eyes. She looked at Jackson like he’d just struck her.

“I’m still waiting to hear from Professor Reed,” she said. “He might be able to take Cody. Understand what happened to him. But… it’s been a week. I know the storm’s made a mess of everything, but the phones are back up.”

She swallowed. “He always answers me, Jackson.”

Darla was pale. She swallowed hard and sank into a dining chair. Her hair hadn’t been styled. She didn’t look like the sharp-edged woman he’d met weeks ago in the diner. The perfume was gone. Gin had taken its place.

An empty tumbler sat on the table beside her shaking hand. Her eyes had retreated into dark hollows. She looked used up.

Cody turned back to the sand and resumed tracing.

Movement again. He could hear it scraping on the floor, like Cody’s fingers drawing in the sand.

“I had to put gloves on him.” Darla pointed at the wall. Two symbols were smeared there in dried blood. “Sometimes he’s good. I mean… like old Cody. From before all this. But then…” Her voice cracked. “What he says… it can be terrifying.”

The growl started small. His heart pounded. Something was out there. Probably smelled the blood.

Getting louder. Closer. His mouth was sour. He forced himself to open his eye again. Something was coming.

But the memories wouldn’t let go so easily.

“...thought about Arkham...” The voice slurred. There was something off. It sounded almost amused.

Cody traced a symbol — something like a triangle with an intricate circle in the center. He plucked grains of sand from the center, then lifted his bare hand and began drawing in the air.

Jackson smelled it.

Charred flesh.

Darla sprang forward and shoved the glove back onto his hand before he could protest. Her eyes were almost feral.

“Arkham...”

Tears ran down her face, following the well-worn grooves in her make-up.

He tried to shake it off.

The growl was loud. Almost on top of him, and he couldn’t move. Blood rushed through him. His temple pounded on the floor in time with his chest. His legs ached to stand. To get far away, but he was welded to the rough floorboards.

The mill... No. Barn? No animals, not even manure. Then what the hell was it? He drug his thoughts back to the surface. Barn. Yes. Old, damaged, abandoned. Just old wood and death.

Growling death was just outside. The weight settled on his back, pressing his ribcage mercilessly into the floor.

He didn’t see any bodies, but he could smell that there had been. He looked to the side. There were stains on the floor, not unlike the one he lay in right now.

His breath was coming in gasps, like a fish pulled onto land.

Then it hit.

The growl flattened into a steady rumble. A whistle shrilled.

A train.

Just a lousy train passing somewhere out there.

He lay there with his heart trying to chew through his ribs. Relief and disgust took turns on him.

He closed his eye and stared at the doppelganger from the mill. He could smell the putrid stale whiskey. The face. His face. Or close enough to make his stomach wrench. Unshaven and unkempt, twisted into a sneer. Heavy-lidded eyes bore into Jackson. Dark pools with runes floating in them. His mouth moved, but no words came out.

Jackson jerked awake.

It had happened too many times since they’d left the small town with all its secrets. The man had invaded his mind and wouldn’t leave. That was the slurred and familiar voice he’d been hearing.

Shit.

It had been weeks. When was it going to give up haunting him?

The sun was high in the sky now.

Their cutting laughter as they worked him over came back in flashes. Their black-pitted eyes glinted with hate in the dim lantern light. It had been after midnight when they cornered him. He remembered the Nash following him. He and Darla— No. That was before. Before she stopped pretending she was holding together.

Time refused to march in a straight line.

He remembered dropping two of the thugs before the darkness took him.

He rolled to his side, groaning through the pain.

There on the beam were symbols, carved into the wood. He could smell the kerosene. Feel the heat on his leg. He could taste the ash in the air.

He stared at the symbols, forcing his mind to make sense of it. Stared until they became brands. Cattle brands. Not arcane sigils. The phantom heat dissipated. It left him chilled.

A piece of paper was tacked to a beam nearby. He stared at it for what felt like hours. Willing himself to rise and failing over and over.

Finally, he managed to hoist his battered body up and staggered over. He leaned on the beam for fear of collapsing. A pair of bloody fingerprints decorated the side, otherwise it was written in a neat, but not professional, hand. The paper was thick; expensive. The letters on the top of the paper jumbled and mocked him. Once he got his mind to corral them, he read it. New Clover Club. Even with his muddled brain, he knew what that meant.

He blinked sweat from his eyes. The words blurred and shifted each time he tried to reread a sentence. Having only one good eye didn’t help.

__________________________________________________________________________

Mr. Majors,

I assume you... read this when you come to. will be able to... I instructed the boys... one good eye. leave you... welcome

Goddamn, what was happening? His vision tunneled and he felt his knees buckling. There was no stopping it. He reached for the beam but only came up with the paper as he crashed back to the floor.

He had no idea how long he lay in the puddle of spit before jerking back to consciousness. He smoothed out the paper and tried to keep reading. Nothing changed.

As should... clear, ...now... your life is in my hands.

I...spared you.

... mistake that for altr... do not

You are...my debt.

Levitic.. Hyde

__________________________________________________________________________ 

Jackson read the bloody note repeatedly, trying to make his mind grasp the words that swam across the paper.

Sonofabitch.

A few weeks ago, Hyde wanted him in the ground. Tommy-guns and all. Now he wanted to own a piece of him instead.

He pushed himself into a sitting position, back to the post. He lay his head back against the hard wood but didn’t dare close his eye. He knew what, or who would be waiting for him. Dust swirled in the sunbeams. With each blink, he was sure the dust stopped when his eye was shut.

You are in my debt.

Leviticus Hyde

And now, he couldn’t see straight and he wasn’t gonna be able to chew on his left side for a while.

Fantastic.

The first time he tried to walk, he nearly blacked out and his knees buckled again.

The second, his legs remembered who was in charge. Barely.

He stumbled out of the barn and onto a narrow state road. Sunlight stabbed his skull like an ice pick. Shit. They took his hat. He liked that hat.

He squinted and made out Arkham’s distant rooftops.

Old Salem Road, no, Aylesbury Pike. Gonna be a long walk.

God, he wanted a drink. His tongue felt like it was going to choke him.

Just one won’t hurt. Maybe a double. Nothin’ like a shot to clear the ole cobwebs. The drunken ghost living in his head was vocal, and this time, he made a helluva lot of sense.

He started hobbling toward town. Hopefully Hyde’s men hadn’t wrecked his DeSoto. He’d just paid to have the bullet holes patched and the whole thing repainted. It was the only thing he owned that was worth a damn.

Amazing how much money sobriety put back in a man’s pocket.

Didn’t feel like it bought him much today.

He’d taken a shot or two after Danvers Pointe. Medicinal purposes. Sleep, mostly. Then he’d sworn it off again.

Tonight though, who could tell. That’s the spirit. I toldja you’d regret it.

“Shut up. Go away.”

“I remember when you died.”

Suddenly he couldn’t remember if those were his words, or someone else’s.

He trudged on lost in his addled mind.

An old Chevy rattled and wheezed up beside him; more rust than blue.

“Need’n a ride back to the city, looks like,” the driver said.

’28. National. Thing would never die.

The man wore a sweat-stained hat that had long ago surrendered its shape. A white beard swallowed most of his face and spilled down over a round belly.

Crates of chickens clucked miserably in the truck bed. Broken eggs oozed through the slats.

“Well, come on then. I ain’t got all day.”

The engine groaned as he shoved it into gear.

Jackson hauled himself into the cab. Stabbing pain in his ribs immediately made him regret his life choices.

“Much obliged,” he said. “Jackson.”

“Hubert.” The old man held out a liver-spotted hand with more strength in it than Jackson expected. “Road’s finally cleared from the storm. Oughtta be to town in ‘bout half an hour I ‘spect.”

After ten minutes of nothing but complaints from the old truck, Hubert spoke again.

“Funny thing… seems more and more’a you fellas gettin’ dumped off at Old Man Casper’s barn. I given quite a few rides this year.” He waited a beat, then; “your business, ‘course. Don’t mean to pry.”

There wasn’t really a question, so Jackson didn’t answer. He sat quietly probing the gap in his jaw with his tongue.

Tired.

Angry.

The conversation with Darla swirled in his thoughts. What the hell were they going to do with Cody?

They?

What day was it?

The truck coughed its way over the crest of a low hill.

Jackson glanced to his right.

A scarecrow stood alone in a fallow field. The pole that had been used for its arms had shifted, like something too heavy had sat on it. Busted from the storm is more likely. Now it pointed to the ground on one side and the sky on the other.

Six crows lined its outstretched arms like jagged teeth on a rusted saw.

As the truck chortled past, every one of them turned its head.

Not toward the engine.

Toward him.

__________________________________________________________________________

Thanks for tuning in again for more adventures with Jackson and Darla. I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s episode. I’ll continue to release an episode per week on Wednesdays on Facebook and here. If you missed an episode or would like to read the first series titled Danvers Pointe, I have them all archived on the website as well. Please like and share if you find some enjoyment. Mike.