So. Let me set the scene, as they say.
Imagine a cramped office, the white plaster stained yellow by years of unfiltered cigarette smoke and hot plate meals. At a table, two men sit. One of them is me, and by me, I mean your humble narrator, Dan Moxey. The other is the sexton of Christchurch Cemetery, a guy named Cadwaller.
It should be mentioned that at this point in our story, Cadwaller had me at gunpoint. Now, off the record, this happens to me more than you might expect, so I was doing my best Sinatra impression—cool, calm, and condescending. But Cadwaller could have given the man himself lessons in equipoise. “Sun’s almost set. They’ll be out soon,” he said, and he might as well have been talking about the weather. But his words chilled me right to the bone. I didn’t know who “they” were, but I damn sure knew I didn’t want to meet them.
To cover my sudden attack of nerves, I did my due diligence and took in my surroundings—in this case, the sexton’s office. A good article always needs some descriptive fluff, if only to pad the word count. If I lived to write it, which didn’t seem all that likely in the moment, but I digress. The window to my left was papered over with innumerable layers of the Arkham Gazette, the local fishwrapper, and the incandescent tube overhead hummed and sputtered as if it was on its last filament. There was a cheesecake calendar—three years out of date I couldn’t help but note—pinned to the wall to my right, next to the window that looked out over Christchurch Cemetery.
Outside, the sun was low, and everything was painted in hues of orange and red. As Cadwaller had noted, night was coming on fast, and I had the distinct feeling I was running out of time. But mostly, I was thinking about how it was all my editor’s fault.
I’m convinced that every misfortune in my career to date can be laid at the size elevens of one Salvatore Vecoli. Sicilian by birth, dyspeptic by nature, Sal is the eagle that eternally pecks my liver; I seek to inform the public and he seeks to push gash copy. But that’s how things work at the Clark County Gazette—established 1909 and maintaining a record of respectful mediocrity for just over sixty years.
Only I wasn’t in Clark County now. I was in Arkham, Massachusetts and, as I’d come to learn, the rules here were different. For one thing, gambrel roofs went out of style in the last century, but Arkham is full of them. Give me a split-level ranch house any day. Or better yet, a nice apartment in Corona Heights.
You might be asking yourself why I was there in the first place. Well, it was Sal’s fault, as I said. One Gladys Whipple of Kingsport had baked a Boston cream pie for the record books, and Sal, in his infinite wisdom, had decided that our readers—all twelve of them—needed her recipe.
While I was diligently interviewing the old dear on cooking times, she made with the good gossip. Amidst the usual chatter was the mention of a police investigation into a suspicious death. A body was exhumed from the cemetery, only…there was no body to be found. Just an empty casket and a lot of uncomfortable questions.
So, I figured, being a reporter, I might as well start asking them. I bought a bus ticket to Arkham and started poking around—without mentioning it to Sal, mind. Better to ask forgiveness, right? Not my finest hour, I admit.
Right off the bus, I got a hinky feeling. Like a lot of places, the old was giving way to the new in Arkham, but not without a fight. Tasteful modern colonial homes rose along the hills across the river, contrasting with the unfashionable architecture prevalent in the town itself. The university had some commotion going on; protests are ubiquitous these days. There were drum circles in the quad and wilted flower children left over from the apogee of Haight-Ashbury roaming the streets.
But normal as it was, something about it was like looking at a crooked picture on the wall. Ask any reporter: we’ve got a second sense when it comes to knowing that something is wrong. And Arkham felt wrong.
Turns out the town had a lot going on, and I’m not talking about the nightlife. Bodysnatching was apparently an old tradition beneath those centuried gambrel roofs, going all the way back to the turn of the century and the cholera epidemic. But I wasn’t interested in fifty-year-old crimes—I wanted to know about more recent shenanigans.
The police, as expected, were of absolutely no help. They barely acknowledged the local newshounds, let alone an out-of-towner like me. The minute I started sniffing around, they started the usual song and dance—warnings against vagrancy, not-so-subtle hints to catch the next bus to Innsmouth, that sort of thing.
The locals were even more tight-lipped, which set off alarm bells in my head. In my experience, if the resident barflies don’t want to gab, you know something’s wrong. It was as if the whole town was in on it, whatever it was. Even the old gals at the Orne Library gave me the hairy eyeball when I asked about back-copies of the Arkham Gazette.
A smart guy would have gotten the hint. But me, well…Sal says I’ve got a terrier mentality: show me a story, and I worry it to death. I decided I’d gotten my teeth into something, even if I didn’t know what it was.
By then, I figured I might as well go right to the source of the whole business—Christchurch Cemetery. In retrospect, not the wisest decision of an otherwise sterling career in journalism, but hindsight is twenty-twenty.
The cemetery was on the lower south side of Arkham, about three blocks from the Miskatonic river, which suited me. The river was picturesque but smelled like oysters that had been too long in the sun.
Then, Arkham as a whole had a funny odor to it—the whiff of mystery, as someone more poetic might have put it. Me, I put it down to the river and left it at that.
Christchurch was big, and by big, I mean imagine the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Now replace the trees with headstones, and you’ve got the idea. A lot of people have died in Arkham over the years, and I guess most of them were in Christchurch Cemetery.
Something that big always has history to go with it, and Christchurch was no different. Arkham had started as just one more remote town in backwoods New England, and while there had been other burying grounds before it, Christchurch was the only one that rated a mention in the town records. At the time, I thought nothing of it.
Now, I can’t stop wondering. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Cemeteries are not my favorite places. I need reminders of my own mortality the way I need a hole in the head. But Christchurch took the cake; it wasn’t gaudy or even particularly gloomy. The grass was manicured, the trees tastefully trimmed. Nonetheless, there was something unpleasant about it. You know the feeling when you walk into a house where somebody’s died, and you get a little chill? Christchurch was like that. Like every soul buried there was screaming for me to get out.
At the time, I chalked it up to the feng shui being off. How right I was.
As I followed the circuitous path from the entrance up to the sexton’s office, I was reminded of the swell of a termite mound; possibly not the image the town council was going for, but who am I to judge? I saw a few lonely souls here and there on my trek, but otherwise, I had the whole place to myself. I wondered when they locked up. Sunset was traditional, but Arkham seemed to have its own way of doing things. Either way, I wasn’t keen on the idea of being here after dark.
I took a few surreptitious snapshots with my camera as I perambulated. The compact Rolleiflex SL35 wasn’t exactly discreet, but then, neither was I. In my opinion, only cops and spies pretend to be something other than what they are. I had a tape recorder in my jacket pocket as well, though I wasn’t expecting to use it. Something about it seemed to put the Arkhamites right off their feed, even worse than the camera.
Maybe they were just a private bunch. Maybe they have reason to be. My digging hadn’t uncovered much, but what I had found was a litany of bad press that’d have made Barnum blush. The aforementioned body snatching sprees, missing children, professors at the local college speaking in tongues—it was like something out of the pulps. However you sliced it, Arkham hadn’t had an easy century of it, and things were only getting worse.
Thankfully, the sexton, Cadwaller, was in and I introduced myself to him on the doorstep of his office as afternoon waned into evening. I was careful to flash my press credentials, just like I had to the morgue attendant at St. Mary’s Hospital, who’d given me the guy’s name in the first place. It always paid to be up front with working guys. Made it less likely that they’d come after you with a Louisville slugger when the story hit. “Dan Moxey, Clark County Gazette. Got time for a chinwag?”
“You a reporter, man?” Cadwaller asked in a breezy tone. He didn’t look like much, lounging against the doorframe like he was half asleep. I figured him for a burn-out, on the far edge of a long-term LSD trip. He was a short guy who wore an army-green jacket that was mostly stained, and had a face that was covered in acne scars. “Far out. I haven’t talked to a reporter in, well, ever, I guess.”
“I’ve never talked to a sexton, so I guess we’re both trying something new today,” I said, laying my best bullshit grin on him.
Cadwaller nodded. “Right on, man. You want to know about that missing body, huh?”
I admit, he surprised me. Even the morgue attendant had needed a palmful of cash to get him talking. “Good guess. What can you tell me?”
“Dude was murdered. Poison.”
I paused and considered pulling out my tape recorder. But I didn’t want to distract him, if he was confessing. “How do you know that?”
“They told me, man. How else would I know?” He was smiling as he said it, but I didn’t like the way it looked. Not quite as vacant as I’d imagined; sharper, somehow.
“Who told you?” I asked carefully.
Cadwaller smiled. “Hey man, you want to come in, get some coffee? I got instant.” He stepped back, inviting me in. I hesitated because despite what you might be thinking at this point, I’m not a complete idiot. There was something off about Mr. Cadwaller; not even a blind man could miss it. Maybe he was just a burn-out, like I’d assumed. Or maybe…well.
Either way, I wanted to know. So, I went.
Did you know terriers will follow a rat down a hole, no matter how big the rat or how dark the hole? Yeah. Instincts, folks. Sometimes they let you down.
Three minutes later, while our coffee cooled, Cadwaller pulled his piece. Which brings us back to the beginning. Early evening was slipping into night, and I was still trying to fit the puzzle pieces together. None of it was clicking.
My host wasn’t making it easy, either. Straight answers weren’t Cadwaller’s bag. He talked in circles, and it only got more confusing as the sun got lower, talking about them, whoever they were, in terms so cryptic as to be useless.
“So, who are they, huh?” I asked. “They got names, or what?”
Cadwaller gave me a dopey grin. “They got more names than we got minutes, man. They been doing this since way back when. Egypt and shit. Babylon. Only they need help, see? They need a few cats up top, to see that the goods get delivered on time—and fresh.”
“The goods? Bodies, you mean?” I was sweating through my shirt. It was hot in the office; muggy. Massachusetts muggy. Cadwaller didn’t seem bothered.
“I like to think of it like I’m Nixon and this is China,” he said. “I’m the only dude for the gig. You feel me?”
Cadwaller’s debatable grasp of politics aside, I was trying to pick up what he was laying down, only it was damn difficult. I still wasn’t sure what I was dealing with here. A bodysnatching ring? Organ harvesters? It was big, whatever it was. Hell, I figured the whole town was in on it. Why else would they have given me the cold shoulder? Arkham had earned a reputation for bootlegging back in the Prohibition days. Maybe they’d figured out a new dodge in the decades since.
“I feel you, but I’m still not sure I understand. You mind if I record this?” I showed him my tape recorder. I figured since he already had a gun in my face, might as well go for broke.
Cadwaller shrugged. “Do as thou wilt, baby. Nobody will hear it.”
That gave me pause, but I kept my face straight and clicked the button. In situations like this, I find it best to concentrate on getting the facts first and figuring out what to do with them later. “So, tell me about these guys you work for. What are they doing with the bodies?”
Cadwaller gave me that stupid grin again, and I figured whatever he was smoking, it wasn’t kosher. His eyes flicked to the window, and there was no light outside. I heard a car engine backfire in the distance, and the howling of dogs. Something about the sound frightened me in a way the gun in Cadwaller’s hand didn’t.
Later, I realized why. See, sometimes you hear one thing, but you know it isn’t that. It’s just your brain trying to explain something in terms you can understand. Your mind plays tricks in the short term, trying to save you some pain in the long run.
Anyway, I heard dogs.
“Well?” I asked. “What’s going on? Level with me.”
“Sure. Coffin nail?” Cadwaller replied, offering me a crumpled pack of off-brand cigarettes. I took one to be polite, and he lit it with a match scraped to life via the flick of a thumbnail. Cadwaller smiled at me around his own cigarette. “Know why they call them coffin nails?”
“Because every one of them you smoke hammers another nail into the lid,” I said.
Cadwaller hooted laughter and nodded. “The way I go through them, my casket won’t be nothing but nails,” he said. “Figure it’s a race between cancer and Agent Orange to see which gets me first.”
“Why not both?” I said and got another laugh. Cadwaller was a cheery guy. Not so cheery was the barking outside. The dogs were getting closer. I wondered if the cemetery employed guard dogs, but even as the thought crossed my mind, I knew that wasn’t what I was hearing. I can’t explain how I knew. Maybe it was instinct. Like how you freeze when you hear a sound you don’t recognize, or see an unfamiliar shadow.
“That’s what it’s all about, baby,” Cadwaller said, and though I didn’t follow, I nodded along. “Anyway, it’s a—what do you call it—a détente, right? A compromise between civilized folks, you dig?”
“Somebody’s digging, all right,” I said. Cadwaller hooted like I was Don Rickles and this was the Catskills. Outside, I heard something snuffling around the bottom of the door. I thought it was a dog at first, but—there was something off about the sound. It was…greedy. That’s the best way to describe it.
At any rate, Cadwaller sat back and blew smoke rings into the fuggy air. “When I took the gig, man, I was two weeks back from a stay in the Hanoi Hilton. Bình Dương province. Know what I did there?”
“Some sight-seeing? Spearfishing?”
He smiled. “No, man. I got down and dirty, baby. Worms in the goddamn earth.” He gestured with the pistol. “Me and this sweet piece, here, we volunteered for that shit.”
“You were a tunnel rat,” I said.
“Non gratum anus rodentum,” he said, still smiling. But I could see the cracks. Cadwaller’s cheerful façade was pasted over something a lot less pleasant. I decided to keep my smart comments to a minimum.
“You were telling me about the gig,” I said, trying to steer him back on track.
He giggled softly and nodded, like a kid with a secret. “The last guy, he got old and soft in the noggin.” Cadwaller tapped his temple with the barrel of his pistol for emphasis, and I couldn’t help but flinch. I wasn’t happy about being held at gunpoint, but I’d be even unhappier if I had to watch him accidentally blow his own head off—or mine, come to that.
“I hear that happens,” I said.
“They were pretty desperate by the time I moseyed into town. Nobody wanted the gig. Can you believe that? Three hots and a cot, for what? Some weeding, some digging. Easy street, baby.” Cadwaller paused, listening. I did too. The snuffling at the door had ceased, but I could still hear something prowling around outside. A shadow flickered across the window, but whatever cast it was staying out of sight, and I don’t mind saying I was grateful for it.
“Easy street,” I repeated. Cadwaller didn’t seem bothered by whatever was out there; maybe familiarity bred contempt, or maybe he was just so burnt out nothing phased him. “So, how’d they rope you in, these bosses of yours?”
“They came to me, man. Gave me the scoop, and I saw the light.” The way he said it made it sound like a religious epiphany. “They explained it all, and it made beaucoup sense to me. Give a little, get a little, right?” He pointed the pistol at me. “We give them the dead and they leave the living alone. Oldest treaty in the civilized world. You dig? They are all around us, right? Worms in the earth, man. Worse than Charlie on his best day.”
“That missing body isn’t the first one. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Cadwaller shook his head. “Man, for a reporter you don’t listen too good.”
I ignored that. “So, what happened to the bodies? Your friends sell them for parts on the black market? Or maybe they’re one of those weird woo-woo cults, doing awful things with body parts out in the tall trees?”
“No man, listen, I told you—it’s the détente. The agreement. We keep to our side of the demilitarized zone, and they keep to theirs. Never the twain shall meet.” Cadwaller scratched his chin. “Only, they got to eat, right?”
“Eat…?” I leaned forward so quickly that Cadwaller jumped. “You mean to tell me that there’s someone eating bodies in this town? Like a—a necrophagic conspiracy?”
“I don’t know about that, man. Where they stick what ain’t no business of mine. Live and let live, as the man said to the grizzly. But it is a conspiracy, I guess. Lot of dudes know—town fathers. You dig? They know where the bread is buttered, baby. And the worms in the earth, they know a sweet deal when they see one.” Cadwaller gestured like a Vaudeville magician, fingers waggling and eyebrows hopping. “Détente, man. Peace in our time.”
Something scratched at the door to the office. The sound ratcheted through me, and I couldn’t help but look at the door. It flexed on its hinges, like something heavy was pressed against the other side. Something that wasn’t a dog but panted like one. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked, acutely conscious of just how little time I had.
“I’m not being paid to shoot guys—just bury them,” he said, simply. “But I figure dropping you in a hole is a good way to overcomplicate things, right?”
“Seems simple enough to me.”
“You ain’t the concern, baby. It’s those who come after. Not the local pigs, because they know the deal even if they don’t know what they know. You get me? But Arkham ain’t the world, no matter what the folks here tell themselves. The shadows here ain’t no deeper than they were in Bình Dương. I can see the whole map in my head, man, that’s why they gave me the job. They need someone who can get low but not lose sight of the tip-top.”
“You’re using a lot of words, but I still don’t follow,” I said.
Cadwaller set his piece down on the table and sat back, an easy smile on his hangdog face. “It comes down to a question, baby. What’s more important to you—the truth today or the sunrise tomorrow?” He laughed.
I looked at him, then at the door and what might be waiting out there for me if I said the wrong thing. I could almost see them, hunched and ready. Cadwaller wouldn’t lift a hand to help, I knew that. He’d chosen his side.
I went for the pistol.
I’m no Ali, but I can throw a punch. Cadwaller slammed back into the wall, and then to the floor. I snatched his weapon and went for the door. I’d like to say I was thinking coolly at that point, but the truth is, I was running on adrenaline and panic. Whoever—whatever—was out there, I figured I could use the gun to keep them back, give me some room to run. If I could make the street…
I stepped out into the night, and there was nothing out there but tombstones painted silver by the moon. No sign of any dogs, no shadowy shapes. But the absence made me more nervous than if there’d been something waiting. Because I knew they were out there. I knew I was being watched. The pistol felt like a toy in my hand. I heard the click of a lighter behind me and turned. Cadwaller smiled at me through a halo of cigarette smoke.
“What are you waiting for, man? Go on.”
I raised the pistol, though I didn’t have the faintest idea what I was going to do with it. Cadwaller didn’t seem concerned. He just kept grinning, like a skull wrapped in wax. I heard something scrape against a headstone. Then, a harsh panting, from somewhere to my left, out of sight. I imagined firefly eyes winking in the dark beyond the light of the office.
In that moment, I knew that if I ran, that was it. Gun or not, I’d be another statistic. Another missing corpse to go with the rest.
“Tell me who they are,” I said, as I tried to ignore the weight of those unseen eyes. “How deep does it go?” I could hear something moving across the lawn towards me, a sort of sneaky, low-down sort of sound. I was reminded of a cat circling a bird.
Cadwaller puffed on his cigarette. “Center of the earth, baby. All the way down to the Vale of Pnath and out the other side. Or so I hear.” He sniffed and glanced off to my left, watching something I couldn’t see. It growled, almost in my ear, and I felt my blood turn to water. Cadwaller looked back at me. “Better decide what you’re going to do quick, baby. Or they’ll do it for you.”
Like I said, I knew that if I ran, I wouldn’t make it. So, I did the only thing I could. I handed Cadwaller his gun back and held up my hands. I’m no hero. And at the end of the day, even a terrier knows when to let go.
Cadwaller took the gun and patted me on the arm. “I know it’s hard to square, but they got to eat, man, just like we do. And better they eat the dead than us, right?” He grinned, showing off his teeth. “Non gratum anus rodentum. You dig?”
I sighed. “I dig.”
“Right on,” he said. He looked past me and gave someone a thumbs up. I didn’t turn around, because I knew that if I had, I would have seen them—seen something. And at that moment, I didn’t want to see a damn thing. Cadwaller put his arm around my shoulders and walked me all the way down to the front gate of Christchurch Cemetery.
I’d like to say I saw something following us, but, well, I was a bit preoccupied. Instead, I left and didn’t look back. I spent the night in the bus station and caught the first Greyhound heading west. I felt eyes on me the entire way. Maybe I was imagining things. Maybe not. Either way, I figured better safe than sorry.
So, there we have it. The story of my rotten trip to a rotten town. Arkham is a worm-eaten apple, and I nearly came face-to-face with the worm itself.
Instead, I chickened out. Probably the smartest decision I’ve ever made, but buddy does it sting. Two weeks on, and I can still smell Cadwaller’s coffin nails in my hair and clothes. But that’s all I’ve got. When I got back, there was nothing on the wire about the missing corpse, or any investigation into goings on at the cemetery. And to say Sal was unhappy is an understatement.
As I sit here now, at my desk, I’m supposed to be writing my article on Gladys Whipple’s Boston Cream pie, but instead, I’m listening to my recording of Cadwaller’s meandering explanation. I can hear the sounds outside his office better. The snuffling, the growling—but now I can hear the muffled laughter too.
Sometimes I wonder whether it was all a joke.
I hope so.
But I can’t help but wonder about the punchline.
