Previously on Alike Indignity, occultist and now successful body-swapper Talcott Meiger realizes he made a mistake when he switched places with Elias Husserl, Jr. Talcott seeks additional funds by swiping what he can from the Husserl family estate, but in the attempt he runs afoul of two bruisers for the Sheldon gang.

Meet the scions of the Meiger and Husserl families in Tim Pratt’s new serial, Alike Indignity, which mixes family rivalry with dangerous magics. The Husserl family’s plight continues in Fantasy Flight Games’ newest scenario pack Traces to Nowhere for Arkham Horror: The Card Game, now available wherever fine games are sold.

Read or listen to to the fourth chapter, “Head Over Heels,” below, and subscribe to the Aconyte Fiction Podcast to make sure you catch the rest of the series. 

Alike Indignity

Chapter 4: Head Over Heels

by Tim Pratt

Once Olive settled poor Junior Husserl – body-swapped against his will into the decrepit form of dying Talcott Meiger – and assured him she was on the case to figure out how to undo the heinous magic, the nursemaid slipped back to her own cramped room in the servants’ quarters. She put a few useful items in a shoulder bag, reassured by the weight. Then, she went upstairs to Miss Zelda Meiger’s room, just in case Junior’s lady love had returned already, but as expected, the chamber was unoccupied and messy: the bed unmade, bobby pins scattered across the dressing table, stockings and a beaded dress puddled on the floor. Young women with few cares seldom gave a thought to the cares they created for others. Olive was annoyed at her own urge to tidy up after the girl. Let one of the housemaids do it. She had a mission and would be paid handsomely for it.

Normally a servant leaving their invalid charge without permission would be cause for dismissal, but she was sure no one in the Meiger family would even notice. Things had been… confused and disarrayed in the household. Josef Meiger had disappeared – even rumored to have “gone off” – with his bodyguard Gavriella some time ago on mysterious business and had not yet returned, leaving the other family members in various states of anxiety and distress, hardly caring to chart the comings and goings of staff. If challenged, Olive would just say she was off to fetch Talcott’s medicine. Even if that medicine was the potion he’d used to leave his old body for a new, fresh one.

She even managed to make a phone call without being observed and tucked the receiver tight to her ear. While none of her network of cousins and siblings owned phones, some of her more idle relatives usually loitered around the general store, and the cranky old Schoffner proprietor consented to holler out for them. Her cousin Richie answered the call. “Has Vance set off across the river yet?” she asked.

“Naw, he’s still napping.”

Vance drove a taxi, and most evenings he ferried Arkham’s well-to-do between the theaters, restaurants, and speakeasies. “Run and tell him to pick me up on his way? I need to get to the Excelsior quick.”

“I don’t know about running,” Richie said. “I don’t usually run unless someone’s chasing me.”

“Did I ever tell your mother about what you and the Cribbins boy got up to–”

“Aw, Olive, no reason to go there, all right, I’ll tell him.”

Richie was a nice guy, but lazy; fortunately, Olive was good at motivating people. Vance was more of a go-getter. He’d been a chauffeur for a wealthy bachelor high up in the Silver Twilight Lodge until the gentleman vanished under mysterious circumstances – a ragged hole was discovered in his roof afterward, and a strange black puddle on the kitchen floor, but the sheriff said he’d probably just run off with a fling, which was about par for the course when it came to investigations in Arkham.

Olive hung up and headed down the path from the front door, walking to the nearest corner. She didn’t have to wait long in the fading light before Vance pulled up in his shining black car. He’d simply kept his old boss’s ride, and no one had ever questioned it. With a huff, he didn’t ask Olive why she needed to go downtown, just shared the latest family gossip as he cruised across the bridge, and pulled up to the Excelsior. Olive checked her face in the side mirror and decided she looked respectable enough. She did her best to stay on the plain side of pretty. Who had the patience to mess around with hair or face paints? And anyway, being a beauty was more trouble than it was worth; the last thing a servant wanted was to draw the attention of some wealthy buck. Or even an old one. “Thanks, Vance. I’ll make my own way home.”

It was early evening, and she dearly hoped Zelda hadn’t passed her in a taxicab on the way home. Olive prayed that Zelda was still in the hotel, ideally having dinner with Talcott-in-Junior’s-body. Would the old man enjoy the even-more-forbidden-than-it-seemed affair, or be repulsed by it? She didn’t even like to contemplate the idea.

Olive did her best to look like she belonged, casting about for her quarry in the grand lobby, and glimpsed Zelda, her dark hair covered by a cloche hat and her slim legs tucked under her as she sat on a richly upholstered couch. Zelda read a slim book, probably a novel, and she was alone, drat the luck. No real surprise that she’d chosen to linger after her assignation – the Meiger estate wasn’t a merry place lately. Once there’d been great parties there, all the best and brightest eager to mingle, but the family’s reputation had suffered recently, and in the post-flood landscape of Arkham, the Meigers were no longer especially prominent or glamorous. That suited Olive fine. Parties were messy, and drunk guests could get handsy with the help.

Zelda didn’t look up when Olive stood in front of her. So Olive sat next to her instead and said, “Zelda, your boyfriend is in big trouble. Is he around here somewhere?” Faint hope, but worth asking.

Zelda jolted, opened her painted red mouth, and then blinked. “Oh. Oh! Olive, I didn’t recognize you, how strange, I suppose it’s because you’re so, well, out of context here. I’m used to seeing you at home–” Zelda’s brain finally caught up with her ears and she frowned. “What boyfriend? What do you mean?” She looked around, nervous, doubtless wondering if other people from her home life lurked nearby.

“Let’s skip all that, please. I know you’re seeing Junior, the younger son of the unspoken enemy of your family. Is he still here?”

Zelda shook her head, wide-eyed. A dead end. Olive should have stood up and gone in pursuit of other avenues to find Talcott, but she couldn’t help voicing her curiosity. “I can understand why Junior would take up with you – you’re a beauty, and you’re charming – but what do you see in him?” She’d never seen Elias Husserl, Jr. in person, but she’d seen photos, and the glasses, thinning hair, and weak chin hardly made her heart go pitter-pat.

Zelda sighed. “Who knows about us? Do you know if anyone has made contact with Uncle Josef to tell him?”

“I wouldn’t presume to know who or what Mr Meiger knows or doesn’t, or even where he is, but I certainly didn’t try to contact him. Is that why you’re running around with a Husserl? As a way of annoying your uncle into showing his face?”

“My uncle and I were so close once.” Zelda scowled. “He always told me I was his favorite niece, and when our families would go to the seaside together, we’d play croquet and go wading. He taught me to play chess, always wanted to know what I was reading. He paid more attention to me than my parents ever did. We certainly got along better than he did with his own children.”

Well, sure. Olive had nieces and nephews of her own aplenty, whom she adored, although she didn’t want children of her own. It was much more fun to be part of a child’s life when you had no responsibility for them.

Zelda continued. “But then I came to visit, because Mummy and Daddy are simply intolerable, and Uncle Josef hardly spared two words for me. I barely saw him, and now he’s run off with that Gavriella woman, and you can’t tell me she’s just a bodyguard, and I thought… well, listen, I like Junior, I do, he’s a lot of fun, but–”

“But if word got back to your uncle that you were seeing him, your uncle would definitely pay attention to you,” Olive guessed. “And, perhaps, have a strong enough reason to return from wherever he ended up.”

Zelda deflated. “It sounds so silly when you say it straight out. So petty. I’m ashamed of myself, Olive.” She said that in a very unashamed-seeming way.

Olive had observed that well-to-do people, ones who had no natural problems, often contrived to invent problems for themselves. In her more forgiving moments, she chose to believe it was because humans were meant to solve problems and overcome adversity, and they were simply manufacturing challenges the world refused to give them on its own account.

In her less forgiving moments, she thought the rich were silly fools.

Either way, Olive patted Zelda’s hand. “We need to find Junior. If you care for him at all, you’ll help me. There are serious people after him.”

She nodded, still glum. “This Sheldon gang, yes. He had some business deal with them go sour, I don’t know the details. He told me he was going to lay low and wait for it to blow over, that he’d call me tomorrow.”

Olive opened her mouth to say she doubted that, but Zelda surprised her.

“Except he wouldn’t meet my eyes. When he went to the bathroom, I searched his things and found a ticket. He’s going to be on the late train to Boston. I don’t know where he’s spending the hours until then, though. I can’t believe he’s running out on me.”

“I’m sure some of the Sheldon gang’s boys will be watching the train station.” Olive was passingly familiar with the Sheldons. They weren’t as locally powerful as the O’Bannion gang, but they had backwoods tendrils that strangled around Arkham and had grown in strength since the inundation, when the flood arrived and transformed Arkham. “Did you talk about Junior’s problems with the gang when you were with him earlier?” Did Talcott even know the danger he was in?

“A bit, yes, just before he ran off. He didn’t even kiss me goodbye, the brute!”

Ha, so Talcott did have standards. “How did he seem to you? Do you have any idea where he might have gone or what he might be doing?”

Zelda considered the question seriously, which impressed Olive. “A little preoccupied, to be honest. A bit off, but I suppose that’s to be expected since he was lying to my face about his plans.” She shook her head bitterly. “As for finding him, well, I don’t know. I don’t think he’d go home. He knows the gang has been watching the house, and there’s some big party there. He’d definitely want to avoid that.”

This young woman’s predictions about what her lover might do were worthless because it wasn’t her lover’s mind in that body anymore. But Olive didn’t want to go into all that and be considered a lunatic.

She folded her hands together. Where to go next? If Talcott knew the gang was after him, what would he do? Surely, he’d notice the train ticket on his person and consider fleeing to Boston as the most sensible, simplest option. She didn’t have much else to go on. “I suppose I’ll go to the train station and wait for him,” she mused.

“Wait, why are you looking for Junior?” Zelda’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Olive had, fortunately, fabricated an answer for such a query. “Because those Sheldon boys aren’t the only ones looking for him. I don’t know if you know this, but I used to work for a, ah, certain… sort of social club…”

“The Silver Twilight Lodge, yes. I’ve heard some of my relatives talk about it.”

“Right. Well, Junior got his hands on something that belongs to the Order, a valuable old book, and they’ve hired me to get it back.” Total nonsense, especially with the Order in schismatic shambles, but Zelda read novels. She’d be susceptible to tales of intrigue.

Zelda sighed. “Junior’s not much of a reader. If he took a book, he must be planning to sell it.”

“Seems likely,” Olive agreed. “Well, I’d best be off.”

“I’m coming with you.” The fashionable woman rose. “I’d like to give Junior a piece of my mind before he runs off to Boston.”

Junior doesn’t even have a piece of his own mind anymore, Olive thought. Zelda was flighty but stubborn, and it was easier to agree than argue. Besides, if Talcott did see her at the train station, that might distract him long enough for Olive to make a move. Might be strange for Zelda to see the nursemaid get into a scuffle with her boyfriend, but she’d deal with that if it came to it. “Fine by me. I’d appreciate the help.”

They left the hotel for the darkening streets and set off toward the railroad station. Zelda chattered so much that Olive didn’t notice the footsteps behind them until it was too late. A pair of burly men barreled into them and shoved them bodily into an alleyway. Zelda shrieked, and one of the men clapped a hand over her mouth. Olive reached into her bag, but another man pinned her arms, and she struggled without success.

“It’s too bad we missed Junior at the hotel,” a rough voice growled. “But it looks like we got our hands on some bait.”

If they were bait, then the men probably wouldn’t hurt them… at least, not right away. Olive resigned herself to waiting for a better moment to fight back and escape, knowing with a sinking feeling that they were in the grips of the Sheldon gang.

She couldn’t decide if she was more annoyed with Junior, or with Talcott and decided she had irritation aplenty for both.

This was exactly why magic was more trouble than it was worth.