Arkham International: Shadow of the Drowned City – Chapter Nine: Kingsport

CHAPTER NINE: KINGSPORT

by Josh Reynolds

The fog was thick on Water Street. Trish Scarborough could hear the slap of water against the nearby docks and the occasional cry of a seabird, but not much else. Kingsport was quieter than she was used to. It was as if the whole town tucked itself in for the evening and left the streets to – well – whatever was still awake. People like her, or maybe something else. She thought about a cigarette, and decided against it.

The trip over from England had been uncomfortable; something was wrong with the ocean. She’d noticed it before, on the passage from Mexico. The water was too choppy, and the wind was too sharp for the season. The papers were full of stories of beached whales and dolphins hurling themselves onto boats, as if in an effort to escape… something. At Southampton, she’d seen gulls circling above the docks aimlessly and silently, uninterested in the activities of the humans below. Then, of course, there were the fish.

Shoals of them were washing up all along the coast, even in Kingsport. Wherever the sea touched land, it brought the stink of dead fish. The smell was awful, and omnipresent. Worse was the chance of stepping on one, which was far more likely in this fog. She shifted her feet, trying to ease the ache that came with standing in the same spot for too long, and pulled up the collar of her coat. The air felt damp, and not just from the fog.

The warehouse across the street was dark. Then, it would be. There were precious few deliveries these days, and even fewer at night. She reached into her pocket and felt for the vial of dust Mabati had given her before she and Roland had left Oxford. The glass vibrated gently beneath her touch. Mabati had described it as a lodestone; the vibration would grow stronger the closer they were to where they needed to be.

She heard the scrape of soles on wet pavement and tensed. Her free hand fell to her sidearm. “Just me,” Roland whispered. He emerged from the fog a moment later, hands thrust deep in the pockets of his trench-coat and the brim of his fedora pulled low over his face. “Anything?” he asked.

“Not a peep,” Trish murmured. “You?”

“There’s an entrance one street over, but it’s boarded up. So are the windows. We could try the roof, if you were feeling athletic.”

Trish shook her head. “Not particularly. You?”

“My football days are behind me.” Roland glanced at her pocket. “What’s the whosits doing? Still vibrating?”

“Still vibrating,” Trish said. “So, to sum up, one way in. Convenient.”

“Trap,” Roland said.

“Probably. Want to forget about it?”

Roland was silent. Trish looked at him. “Roland?”

“The Bureau canned me. Before we left Mexico.”

Trish looked away. “I figured.” It wasn’t unexpected. Roland’s superiors clearly hadn’t been happy. She felt a flush of guilt, though she knew better than to think it was her fault for involving him. Roland wasn’t the sort to let a thing like this go, no matter what his superiors said. He was a terrier, and he’d chase this rat down a hole no matter how deep. It was one of the things she liked about him. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think I’m long for the Cipher Bureau. I haven’t made contact since Boston.”

“So?”

Trish hesitated. “It’s always a risk, going quiet. When I checked my mail drop in London, I found a coded cablegram direct from Yardley’s replacement. If I didn’t contact the London station, I was to consider myself out in the cold.”

“And did you?”

Trish glanced at him. “No. Something’s off. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s not just Tillinghast that wants us off his back… I think there’s something bigger going on.”

Roland frowned. “Bigger than what happened in Arkham?”

Trish nodded. “Remember what Mabati said? About the first sounding of the horn of the apocalypse?”

“I thought that was hyperbole.”

“So did I, but… everything we’ve seen – not just the fish-monsters and spooks made of dust, but the fish, the weather – it all adds up to some fundamental change in… everything.” She shook her head. “I think we’re in over our heads, and we get a bit deeper with every stop. Maybe Chauncey was right. Maybe we should back off.”

“And do what?” Roland asked, softly. “Forget about it? That’s never been my style. A crime was committed and justice needs to be done.” He looked at the warehouse. “But I am getting tired of running around, looking for answers when we should be looking for the guy who probably has them. If he’s in there…”

“That’s a big if,” Trish said.

“If he’s not, whoever is in there might be able to tell us where he is.”

“What if they’re not in the talking mood?”

Roland opened his coat and drew his sidearm from its holster. “I don’t really care what sort of mood they’re in, frankly. I’m tired of this. I want answers. If you’d rather hang back, I won’t blame you. But me? I’m going in.”

Trish sighed. “Not without me you’re not. I feel bad enough about getting you involved. I don’t know that I could live with myself if I got you killed, too.”

Roland snorted. “You say that like it’s a certainty.”

“I’ve seen you shoot. It probably is.” Trish drew her own weapon. “Come on. If we’re doing it, let’s do it. Before I lose my nerve.”

“Never known that to happen,” Roland said, with a smile. Trish didn’t meet his eyes.

“First time for everything,” she said. A moment later, they were moving across the uneven street, the fog roiling in their wake. The warehouse was nothing special; old, and worn frail by time. She’d done her research. It had belonged to a cannery company once, then some artist had used it as a studio. When she’d gone missing, it had fallen vacant. But that was just the official record. Someone owned it, and had paid a lot of money to make it look like they didn’t. Someone like Tillinghast, maybe. Or maybe not. There was only one way to find out.

She let Roland take the door, noticing the odd sigil scored into the wood as he tried the handle. “Unlocked,” he whispered. She nodded, and he let the door swing inwards. An acrid, briny smell billowed out and there was a faint murmur of sound from within. Voices? If so, they were speaking too low for her to hear them properly.

The smell was stronger inside than out, as if the interior of the warehouse had been underwater for days. Trish could hear water dripping somewhere in the darkened expanse, and the floor beneath her feet had an unpleasant give to it. She heard Roland try the light switch. “No power,” he said, quietly. Nonetheless, his voice echoed eerily.

Power – power – power…

The murmuring from moments ago stilled. Trish felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle and a small, primitive part of her brain began to scream a warning. But about what? Roland fumbled in his coat for a flashlight. She felt a brief sense of relief when the light came on. The edge of the beam caught something – a flash of eye-shine, like that of a cat or another wild animal. Roland paused. “Did you see that?”

“I did,” Trish said.

I – I – I…

The echo was strange. It was like listening to a bad recording of her own voice. “This place is drenched,” Roland said, letting his light play across the rubbish of neglect. “Stuff all over the walls, the floor…”

I – I – I…

Roland froze. Trish looked at him. “What?”

“I saw something. Rat, maybe.” He trained the beam of his flashlight on a spot. Trish squinted. There was something there. Like a bulge of fungus, or–

The thing unfurled with a wet, crackling sound. Something new and sinuous emerged, coiling up and up. As it did so, a convulsive tremor ran through the floor, like the boom of a passing train. In the beam of Roland’s light, eyes shone in the dark, but too many and at all the wrong places. Trish could hear the sound of something sliding across the floor towards them. “Get to the door,” she said, firing at the rising fungal shape. Roland fired as well, at something she couldn’t make out.

I – I – I – tek – TEK – tekeli – li – TEKELI-LI…

An indistinct mass dropped from the ceiling and smashed into the floor only a few inches from her. Pustules of greenish light bloomed across its milky surface and eyes opened in and all over its mass. Their gaze was alien and pitiless and she felt something in her shrink back from their attentions. She did the only thing she could and tried to take those hateful eyes out with a spray of shots from her weapon.

Roland caught her arm. “Run!” She didn’t argue. Together, they ran for the door. But the thing, whatever it was, was in pursuit. She could hear it sloshing in their wake, and feel the tremors of its approach vibrating up through the soles of her feet. Worse, it seemed as if it were coming at them from every direction at once.

A series of near misses followed; lances of shimmering matter punching down from all sides, smashing into the floor, filling the air with splinters. Eyes glared out of the darkness as unseen mouths screamed imprecations or bit savagely at the air. Trish reached the door a half-second before Roland and he shoved her outside and down as a protean coil snatched at them. She scrambled towards the opposite side of the street as he backed away from their pursuer, shouting to keep its attention on himself.

Roland emptied his weapon into the lashing nest of tendrils that filled the doorway as he fell back into the street. Trish fumbled for her own weapon, as a black, oily mass oozed through the door and spread across the air like the contents of a spilled paint can. It threatened to envelop them both, then – paused. Its eyes rolled this way and that, searching for something. Then, Trish heard the sound of someone approaching. A light shone, piercing the fog. A moment later, a woman strode past her, towards the undulating horror.

“Stay down,” the newcomer shouted, even as she thrust the shimmering object she carried towards the monstrosity. Light – cold and purifying – blazed forth and the thing screamed in a guzzling deluge of voices, some of them not human. It reared up like a cancerous wave, eyes bulging in rage, and perhaps fear. Trish watched as it crashed in on itself and poured back through the doorway and into the warehouse.

A man stepped into view and hurried towards the broken door. He slammed it shut and used a piece of chalk from his pocket to daub something on the sagging wood. He turned to the woman. “I think that’ll hold it, but we need a containment team out here and quick. That thing is at least twice the size of the one we hauled out of the water at Innsmouth last year. And twice as mean.”

“Tillinghast, or whoever sent it, must have riled it up good and proper before they stuffed it in there,” the woman said. The light of the thing she held – a curiously faceted stone – faded into a dull shimmer. “The Mnar fragment did its job though. Score one for our side.” She looked down at Trish. “Still got all your arms and legs then?”

“Who are you people?” Roland asked, as he got to his feet.

“Foundation,” Trish said. The newcomers looked at her appraisingly.

“You know who we are?” the man asked. He sounded surprised. He bent and extended a hand to Trish, as if to help her up.

“I know enough,” Trish said, ignoring the hand as she climbed to her feet. The Foundation was barely a whisper on the line; the sort of urban legend spies told each other on dark winter nights. But the more involved she became in the business of groups like the Coterie, or the Silver Twilight Lodge, the more often she heard it. And now here they were. Coincidence? She didn’t think so. Regardless, they had saved both she and Roland. That bought them some grace, in her book.

“Then you know your only chance of surviving the night is to come with us,” the woman said, as she slid the Mnar fragment into her coat pocket. “If it’s not the shoggoth, it’ll be a deep one – or something worse. You two are outgunned.”

The male agent looked at his companion. “I think what Agent Antonova means is that you’ve made a valiant effort, but maybe it’s time to regroup, and hear us out. Our boss has a proposal for you.”

Trish looked at Roland. He didn’t look happy about any of it; then, Roland was never happy about anything. But he’d follow her lead, until he couldn’t. She looked back at the two Foundation agents. “What sort of proposal?”

Antonova gave her a sharp smile. “The best kind, Miss Scarborough – a job offer.”