Our Men in the Field: Agents of the Bureau of Shadows

 

The stoic and meticulous Gus Jandt of Slavery's Ghost, and the somewhat hapless Ambrose Abernathy of The Case of Ambrose Abernathy, tales available here on the Niche. Both agents of the Bureau of Shadows in the early half of the Nineteenth Century (1800's).

Friday Fiction: The Case of Ambrose Abernathy (Part Six and Last)

     Then the agent felt himself trip and fall, and he was drawn sliding through a long, dark, slippery tunnel downward. For one headlong, disorienting moment all thought except fear fled from his mind; then he was pulled tumbling out into an open space on a trail squelching ooze. He could feel the tentacles let go of his limbs. He sat up, clothes soaked, and tried to wipe his dripping face clear.

     Trey came sliding out behind him, bumping his back, jostling him down into the muck again. The creature scrambled up and ran ahead, yelping "Milk! Milk! Milk!" The words echoed in a cavernous space.

     Abernathy rubbed his eyes clear, blowing the trailing mucus from his mustache, spitting the foul drainage from his mouth. When he had finally caught his breath, he looked up, squinting, trying to make sense of his surroundings, and was struck dumb in trepidation and wonder.

     He was in an enormous space, like an underground cathedral, or amphitheater. Huge pillars, where stalactites dripped down to meet stalagmites, ringed the vast room, the slick flowstone leading downward to the bottom of the bowl. There, by a ghastly pale green light, seemingly shed by itself, lay a pulsating mound that his mind struggled to understand.

     He stood up on shaking legs. At his feet lay the mucid tentacles, slowly withdrawing towards the glowing mass. He followed them with tottering, unsure steps, afraid to draw near the inchoate mass but feeling unable to do anything else, pulled forward by gravity and fascination and a deep sense that here at last was the heart of the mystery.

     The first thing he could make out clearly was the litter of dog-men, lying in a bulky throng around a central, shapeless pile of rough globes. He saw Trey, his slobbering mouth attached to one of the globes, eagerly sucking out a pale liquid that dribbled out the sides of his jowls. Every now and then he murmured ecstatically, "Milk. milk." Even as he crept nearer, Abernathy saw him grow sleepy and slow, falling into a dozing stupor like his brood-mates. The sound of their whizzing breath filled the air. The dog-men snuggled up to the bumpy mass as if it were a pillow. The agent drew nearer, eyes darting, trying to locate this dreaded She that he knew must be near.

     Abruptly, as if he had entered some unmarked sphere of influence, a voice bloomed on his inner ear. It was neither male nor female, but it rang in his mind in husky, alien tones, overwhelming his own conscious dialog. He winced under its onslaught, panicking at the impact of its words.

     Welcome, husband, it said.

     "Where are you?" he squawked out loud, looking around wildly, trying to locate the source of the voice. "Show yourself!"

     I am here, it said. All around. I have been here, forever. And now you shall be too, and our children shall conquer the overworld, and then I shall be there too, forever.

     "Never!" Abernathy shrieked, climbing the pile, still searching for the speaker. He felt that, trapped and unarmed as he was, he would in his new panic still try to tear this thing apart, with his bare hands if he had to, rather than suffer Kindermass's fate. His eyes darted around desperately. "Where are you?"

     You stand on me.

     The agent looked wildly down at his feet. The warty, globular mass he had been treading was already extruding new groping tentacles from its glimmering bulk.

     Only his immediate instinctive terror saved him. He jumped backward off the sloping pile, scuttering down the mound of bubbling lumps and through the congeries of sleepily complaining dog-things, who whimpered at his passing. The tentacles followed swiftly, questing blindly for his flesh.

     He tried to rush up the slimy slopes to escape back through the tunnel, but slid down, defeated by gravity and his own weakness. The tentacles advanced on him, slow but inexorable. He turned and limped away from their progress, exhausted, panicked, blindly seeking another exit in the dimness of the peripheries of the cave.

     As he turned to gauge his pursuer's approach, he stumbled over something in the dark, sending him headlong to the ground. His skull rang with the jolt and his battered limbs blazed with pain. He turned and half-sat up, dazed, looking back. In the growing green light of the oncoming tentacles, he saw what had tripped his steps.

     It was the now battered and beslimed bulk of his lost case kit.

     He looked up instinctively and saw, far above in the roof of the cavern directly over the heap, the pale dot of light, where, distant from these nightmare caves, the clean dawning of the sun must be illuminating the mouth of the well. The falling case had rebounded away to this spot. He had only a fraction of a second to grab it before the tentacles had seized him. They began reeling him back to the knobby mass, which was now writhing and heaving in apparent anticipation.

     Abernathy fumbled the case open and began scrabbling among its contents. The first thing that came to his hand was the athema, the mystic knife, wound with incantations and marked with signs of power. He drew it from its sheath and lashed visciously at the knotty tendrils that held him.

     The blade rebounded harmlessly off the rubbery flesh. The tentacles never paused. He stared incredulously, then tried sawing frantically away at the binding arms. It was like cutting a boarding-house roast. In frustration he brought the knife down once more in a hacking blow. It bounced off, stinging his hand, and went ringing off into the darkness.

     By now he had been dragged back to the rim of the mass. The dog-men had awakened, alerted by the increased activity of their eldritch mother. They churned around it, baffled, excited, crying softly to each other. But they all started yelping and trying to run away when Abernathy drew out the pistol and shot six silver bullets wildly into the mass at their middle.

     The shots sank harmlessly into the semi-gelatinous body. For a moment it drew in, like a snail wincing, then it expanded eagerly.

     Ah, silver, it said in his head. I have not had this sustenance in many years. I thank you for this wedding gift, my husband. He was dragged in closer to the central mass at the top of the monster. To his horror he saw a muculent maw opening there, ready to welcome his unwilling flesh.

     Abernathy went wild. He began throwing the contents of the kit at the creature in a frenzy, willy-nilly, whatever came to his hand. The thing's tentacles, as if excited and aroused by all the activity, grasped and batted at the objects as they pelted its impervious hide. The Bible was torn in pieces, the salt bag exploded by a swat, the bottle of rum crushed like an egg in one squeezing arm. The five-pointed star rebounded uselessly off the thing's knurled skin.

     There was one last thing in the case. He seized the ball-like object blindly and hurled it toward the maw. It was intercepted by one frenzied, coiling arm. Abernathy had one second to recognize the bomb before the tentacle contracted, squeezing the plunger, and the world was filled with roaring flaming light that lifted him toward the roof of the cavern, and he knew no more.

 

     "They found me, they say, almost a mile from the Kindermass farm, unconscious, naked, bruised, my hair burned off, but somehow still alive," the quivering, bandaged little man concluded. "There was no way to tell who I was. I was brought here, a charity case, and when I woke up, I called for you. I had to tell you, to warn you ..." He choked.

     Frobisher patted the agent again, his old hand light as a leaf.

     "There, there," he said. "We've got your report now." He leaned back and his face creased in a wrinkled smile. "And congratulations! You've had your first successful case. Do you still feel like leaving the Bureau?"

     Abernathy's eyes boggled behind his wrappings.

     "Well...no..." he stammered. "But that monster...the danger to the world..."

     "Probably minimal, considering you seem to have blown the thing up," Frobisher concluded. He began to bring himself creakily to his feet. He looked over at the secretary, who was folding up his papers. "Any observations, Mr. Williams?"

     "Only that I read in the papers some time ago that the Kindermass farm was engulfed in a massive sinkhole," he said briskly. He did up the final latch of the casebook. "The sisters and their pet escaped just in time. As Mr. Abernathy had been on the case at the time, I sent an agent to check on the site, but he found nothing unusual." He reached down to the prostrate agent and shook his hand. "I had my dreadful doubts as to your survival, but regulations require a year to pass before I inform the Director officially. Again, congratulations, sir! You have surpassed all my expectations."

     "But ... but we must make sure..."

     "Relax and recuperate, Ambrose," Frobisher said expansively, stretching his back and taking up his cane. "It's all taken care of. We'll be getting you moved to a better hospital soon." He looked around at the cacophonous bedlam of poor patients who had now awakened and were clamoring for the noon-day meal. "I'm sure you could use the peace and quiet.”

     "But, sir, I..."

     "Good-bye, Abernathy." The old Director lifted his hand and waved over his head, he and the secretary already well on their way out.

     Abernathy lay back and closed his eyes, weary with telling his tale. Perhaps I should just rest, he thought, giving up. It's out of my hands now. He tried to relax and ignore the babble of voices and the sound of none too delicate feeding around him.

     He might have drifted off, if it weren't for the sudden squabble in the far corner of the room. A new patient was refusing the offer of the watery potato soup the sister was trying to feed him.

     "Don't want it, nope, nope," came a familiar voice. "Milk, milk, milk!"

     Abernathy sat bolt upright, screaming.

 

--August 28, 2017 to April 13,2018

The Case of Ambrose Abernathy (Part Five)

 

"Here, here!" said Trey huskily. "This Poppa's room. Quiet now! Shh!"

          As short as he was, the agent had to get down on all fours to squeeze in. His trouser knees joined his now-tattered socks in being soaked by the dripping slimy floor, and as worn as the rocks were, he managed to snag and tear them, bloodying his kneecaps. Once inside he stood up groaning loudly, much to the alarm of Trey and the squirming horde that followed them impulsively behind.

          "Sh! Sh!" susurrated huskily through the little chamber, with frightened glances at a shadowy corner. Most of the beasts started scattering immediately to the door on the other side of the room, flowing like water past the disoriented little man. He almost went to his knees again with the pattering pressure. Only Trey's grasping clutch on Abernathy's shoulder kept the bewildered agent upright. But he was nearly knocked down in the panicked exodus that ensued when a loud angry voice from the shadowy corner yelled out, "Here! What disturbs my sleep?"

          In a twinkling the beasts had scrambled out and away, yelping, all except Trey, who stood cringing and whimpering, Abernathy's shoulder pinched cruelly in the reflexive grip of his black claws. Abernathy himself might have followed after them, if it weren't for that. He watched in dread fascination as the tall shadowy figure hunched and scrabbled in the darkness. There was the crack and flare of another crystal, and the hairy and horrible figure of the thing was revealed.

          It was tall but bent, with bloody red eyes and matted, grizzled brown hair that tangled into a trailing, filthy beard. It was dressed in hanging, rotten rags. Its entire countenance was drawn down in a frown, burly black eyebrows and pinched mouth screwed up around a long thin nose, a nose that looked suddenly very familiar. Abernathy gasped.

          "Wallace Kindermass!" he exclaimed.

          The tall man looked stunned. He drew back and took in the little figure before him: Abernathy's clothes, ruined but fancy; his figure small, but upright.

          "A man," he breathed, mouth gaping to show black, broken teeth. "After all these years, another human man."

          The little agent gulped, then stepped forward, and thrust his hand out.

          "Ambrose Abernathy," he said. "Of the Department of Extranatural Affairs. I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Kindermass."

          "I thought I'd never see another human in this life," the other said, his face squeezing into a pained smile, tears flowing from his squinting eyes. "But what are you doing here? You are in great danger. You've got to flee!"

          "I wish I could," said Abernathy. "But damned if I know how. I came in through the wardrobe and it closed behind me."

          "Me too, me too!" the other nodded. "How long ago it seems!"

          "Your eldest sister said it's been almost twenty years."

          "Twenty years! And Sylvia is still alive?"

          "And your other sisters," said Abernathy hurriedly. "But that can wait for now! Don't you know any other way out of here?"

          "None." The other slumped backwards. "Oh, I tried to escape in the early years, but SHE put a stop to my wandering quick enough."

          "She?"

          "She who keeps me here. She who holds me prisoner. She who steals my substance to breed this race of ... of horrors!" Kindermass pointed venomously at Trey, who cowered under the accusation. He turned back to Abernathy. "She who will surely capture you when she learns of your presence!"

          "Where?" Abernathy looked around nervously. "Where is this She?"

          "Through that tunnel," Kindermass said, pointing to the hole where the gangrel pack had fled. "Oh run, man! You haven't much time!"

          "Come with me," the agent said, and held out his hand. "We can get out of here together, sir."

          The other laughed bitterly.

          "If it was that easy, don't you think I'd have left long ago? Look, look here," he said, gesturing Abernathy closer.

          The agent drew nearer to where the shaggy, bent figure stood in the dim blue halo of crystalline light, then gasped and drew back in dismay. Kindermass's almost skeletal legs were knotted through by pale quivering tentacles, going in and out of the scrawny flesh, that attached him to the cave floor like alien roots.

          "What ... what happened to you?"

          "I was drawn down a shining tunnel that suddenly appeared in my wardrobe, ever downward into the earth, until I came upon Her! She had lured me into the lair where she had dwelt for thousands of years, and I, poor fool, the first man ever to fall for her wiles!"

          Abernathy's eyes boggled.

          "Are you telling me there is a centuries-old woman living in this cave?"

          Kindermass cackled obscenely.

          "A woman only by analogy, only by simile. This ... this shapeless thing stole my essence, my seed, and when it ensnared my family's poor bitches from the world above, it harvested their germens and mingled them together to create in the blasphemous matrix of Her abnormal body these ... these monstrosities!" He brought his battered knuckles down in sudden anger on Trey's skull. The creature whimpered in pain and cowered under the assault.

          "She brews inside her foul innards a milk, like a female, but it is merely water and lime and fungus. This is what she feeds me on to keep me alive, me and these...these freaks! These half-breeds!" The ragged old man seemed suddenly transported with rage, bringing his hand down again and again on the dog-man's head and back.

          "Here! Here, now!" Abernathy said, grabbing the withered arms and trying to get between the two. "Violence won't help. If what you say is true, the poor beast is in some misbegotten way your own son!"

          Kindermass collapsed in his grip.

          "Do not remind me," he sobbed. "The shame! The shame..."

          "Pull yourself together, man," the little agent said, shaken. "What we've got to do now is ..."

          Whatever he thought they had to do was quickly rendered moot. There was a sudden touch at his ankle, and he was pulled backward off his feet, falling slap-down on the wet, spongy floor. He lifted himself up on slippery hands, face trailing slime, and looked around.

          While he had been distracted with Kindermass and the hapless Trey, several long tentacles had snaked out of the further cavern opening, oozing silently to where he stood. They gleamed wetly in the dim rock-light. One was already twining around his leg, while another raised up like a questing cobra, seeking for a further grip. Before he could break out of his fascinated horror, it lashed out and grabbed his wrist.

          "Momma!" Trey yapped happily. "Momma will help brudder Natty!"

          "Resist, sir, resist!" howled Kindermass.

          "I'm trying, I'm trying!" Abernathy yelled. But he was being pulled along, hopping on one leg, unbalanced, the dog-man bounding enthusiastically at his heels. The last he saw of Kindermass as he was dragged into the low cave-mouth was the skeletal bearded wretch slumping backward in his rags, the waning blue phosphorescence highlighting his despairing face.

The Case of Ambrose Abernathy (Part Four)

 

He hadn't gone three steps when he became aware that his feet were sopping in cold water. Apparently the rains from outside were trickling into the passage. He instinctively turned back to get his boots and found the way back had indeed vanished. A rough featureless stone wall blocked his retreat. He reached out in panic and touched its immovable surface, then pounded on it to no effect.

          He looked forward again. The pale light continued to withdraw, growing ever fainter.  In despair of any alternative, he hurried after it.

          He put his hand out to the uneven sides of the tunnel to steady himself then pulled back in disgust. The passageway must have been habitually damp, because the walls were coated with a spongy wet mass that sank under his touch, and oozed a light amber mucus where it was pressed. He almost wiped it on his coat, but then tried to simply shake it off. He never paused, but followed the dimming light.

          The tunnel debauched into a wider cave. Abernathy examined it for an instant in the fading iridescence. It seemed to be paved in huge cobblestones, domed like eggs covering the cavern floor. He stepped onto them, trying to tread as lightly as possible from step to step so as not to slip, and had made it halfway through when one crumbled under his foot, throwing him headlong onto the floor with a cracking fall.

          He raised himself up on his palms and looked down. He was not laying on stones, but on a crushed and collapsing bed of skulls. Bony eye-sockets glared up at him angrily. In the fading light, they seemed somehow strange, even to his untrained eye. He reached out tremulously and picked one up that was more or less intact to examine it. The dome was smaller than a typical man's, the teeth pointier. With a shudder he threw it aside and scrambled to his feet, bone fragments flying as he stood, and ran after the fleeing phosphorescence with crackling steps.

          As he stumbled along, he gave some thought to his lost case, of the candles in it that could be lighting his way, of the rum he could be swigging against the chilly cavern air, of the variety of weapons that could be snuggling comfortably in his hand as he plunged into the unknown depths of the earth. But mostly he thought of his bruised and now bleeding feet as he slapped along the damp passage, and how he should have gone to sleep in his boots.

          He figured he had passed through about three more caverns, largely unseen, but each somehow feeling smaller than the last, before the light passed completely from his sight. Whether it had fled beyond him into the depths or simply faded out, he could not tell. Dark red and purple dazzles played against the blackness of his gaze. He staggered on, heedlessly chasing the vanished light, until suddenly he staggered over a soft mound and fell headlong, barking the heels of his palms and jostling his jaws into the wet floor. His teeth rattled together in his head. He only had a second to register the pain, however, as the mound scrabbled out from under him, tumbling him onto his back, and a sudden voice in the darkness growled out "Here! Who you?"

          Abernathy sat in a stunned silence, the wind knocked out of him, body ringing with pain. There was a sharp crack, and a light flared up from a blue crystal, held in a clawed hand. For a moment its light seared across the agent's eyeballs, and he squinted hard, trying to make out the hunched figure behind it. Then either the gleam settled down or his sight adjusted, and he rather wished it hadn't.

          "Who you? Who you?" the figure asked, bringing its slobbering face closer, almost right into Abernathy's, and smelling hard and urgently with a wet, snuffling nose.

          The agent gazed at the creature, stunned. It was shorter even than he, but powerfully built, standing on crooked bandy legs. It reached out and gripped Abernathy's shoulder with a hand tipped with blunt black claws.

          "You lost?" it queried, looking at him quizzically.

          Abernathy simply stared, mouth agape. The bejowled mouth, walleyes, and under-slung teeth made a face that didn't seem fit to produce human speech. The sloping skull certainly didn't argue for complicated thought, and the creature's brow creased as it seemed to work on what seemed an unprecedented circumstance in its existence.

          Abernathy had almost gathered his wits enough to say something when the creature's face broke into a smile, as if it had suddenly remembered a solution.

          "Okay," it grinned happily. "I take Momma. Momma fix. Come with, this way. Come with."

          It began pulling the little agent forward into the dark, its glowing shard held high. Abernathy stumbled after him and got another shock when he put his hand on the creature to steady himself. What he had thought was pale skin turned out to be rough cream-colored fur.

          He was pulled along for yards of tunnels, kinking ever downward. After a bit he noticed that the phosphorescence was getting brighter, and then the strange gangrel creature had tossed its glowing chip away. In the growing light it looked at Abernathy with sidelong admiration.

          "You got nice clothes," it snaffled. "Like Poppa. Poppa give you clothes? Poppa got clothes. Poppa give nobody nuttin'." It looked downhearted and cringed a bit. "Poppa give me nuttin', bonk on head."

          "I'm sorry," Abernathy said, and he really was. The creature, for all its unnatural looks, seemed good-natured enough, and being just slightly smaller than he, not too alarming. "Have you a name?" he queried as they walked along.

          At the sound of the agent's voice the creature had flinched, as if hearing unfamiliar harmonics. It looked up into Abernathy's face with wincing, darting eyes, but seeing encouragement there, it suddenly broke out in a smile that seemed to split its face.

          "Trey Honore Goodboy," it said, tongue slurping around the syllables. "The Third. Poppa gimme name. Yup. That one thing Poppa gimme."

          "It is nice to meet you, Trey," he said, in the most assuring manner he could, though his voice quavered a little. "My name is Ambrose Abernathy."

          "Am... Amber...Natty," the other gobbled, trying to get the name past his floppy cheeks. Abernathy noticed with some apprehension his pointed, canine teeth. He smiled back nervously at him.

          "Tell me, er, Trey, where did you say we were going?"

          "We gonna see Momma. Momma help you, Momma knows everyt'ing. She help you, brudder. Lost brudder Natty. But we got to be quiet, see?" The creature's voice dropped down low, conspiratorially. "We go through Poppa's room, don' wake him up mebbe. Or he bonk us on the head, bonk bonk!"

          "Oh, yes, yes, shhh!" said the agent. "We don't want any trouble!" He wondered what sort of dread beast this Poppa might be. Visions of some kind of demogorgon danced in his brain, making him tread ever softer and shrink into himself as he followed the goblin figure deeper into the subterranean maze.

          He gasped, startled, when they entered a chamber and came upon a bulky lump of breathing flesh, puddled into one corner of the room. Three snorting, snoring heads protruded from the pile, limbs that were more or less legs and arms were curled under oozing layers of fat.

          His gasp must have been louder than he had hoped, because all the eyes sprang open, and the legs began to scramble under the heaving mass. Then he saw it break apart and squirm, and it stood revealed as three more of the gangrel creatures, each subtly different but all obviously of the same kin.

          "Who dis? Who dis?" said the largest of the three, sticking its long, quivering nose into Abernathy's face. It was taller than the little agent, but its limbs were thin and stick-like. Its splayed legs looked like they could barely hold it up.

          "Dis lost brudder Natty," said Trey earnestly. "Him gonna see Momma."

          This set the others huffing "Momma, Momma," enthusiastically. It was quite a while before they settled down. Another squat grey one, that looked like it could have been Trey's cousin, asked "We go with?"

          "Sure, sure," said Trey. "But sh, sh, sh! Don' wake Poppa, 'kay?"

          "Nope, nope, nope," the others yelped, and Abernathy soon found himself scuttling along in the center of an enthusiastic pack, drawing new members as more of the things joined as they scuttled along, which, for all their constant admonitions to each other of sh, sh, sh, seemed to the agent to be making an ungodly amount of noise.

          There must have been about fifty of the creatures around him, jostling through the tunnels, when Abernathy began noticing a change in their behavior. From a jovial, milling pack they started to grow subdued, not really quieter, but more worried. At last, after many winding ways, they reached a low, well-worn cave entrance.

Notes

"Bonk bonk, on the head!" might well qualify as a bit of Babelese, extracted from the Star Trek episode, "Miri." On re-reading I note a bit of analogous situation, with Abernathy and Trey somewhat echoing Bilbo and Gollum in the caves. The above is a sculpture by Patricia Piccinini.

Friday Fiction:The Case of Ambrose Abernathy (Part Three)

 

          First, he sat down on the shrouded bed for a few moments to calm his breathing and tried to make his mind as clear as still water. Not an easy task after the agitating presence of Miss Kindermass, and his dangling feet barely touched the floor once he had obtained his precarious perch on the mattress. It made him feel unstable, not grounded. When he had recovered his balance somewhat, he drew out his watcher and popped it open.

          The wooden needle floated on its bed of mercury with barely a quiver, no more than you would expect in any other old family house. He was disappointed. If there had ever been a presence in this room, it must not have been recently.

          "Should have asked," he muttered aloud as he put the little silver device away. He took up his pad and made a note to enquire about the time of the last disturbance, then hopped down to the floor. He pulled a magnifying ocular from the inner pocket of his jacket, bent wheezily down on his knees, and began examining the jointure of the wainscoting.

          The visual investigation revealed nothing, nor did tapping along the walls and floorboards. Drawing the cover from the bed showed it to be a simple cotton mattress on a carved walnut frame. The headboard was rivetted in place to the wall and immovable, but he took off his jacket and slid himself under the bed to get a look at the floor and the wall behind. He found nothing worse than a few dust mice, rolling disconsolately in the sudden air.

          He pulled himself out and stood, dusting his hands together and brushing his waistcoat down. Before he put the dustcover back in place he reached out, pressing and pulling the rosettes and scrolling on the headboard, just in case. It was all one solid piece of wood.

          This left only the wardrobe. This is it, he thought. The jiggery-pokery. This is probably the secret entrance to where the fat sister brews her home-made hootch, away from her disapproving siblings. That's why she's so daffy. That's what the smelling and rumbling is about. He walked over, boots clocking on the bare floorboards, and put his hand on the door-catch, ready to pull the closet open. There was a tap at the darkened window.

          He turned with a jerk. There, in the inky black glass, a pale puffy face looked back at him, appalled, eyes wide, mouth agape. For a second, his heart stopped with his breath.

          There was a flash of lightning that washed the image out, and he realized that it was his own face that looked back at him, underlit in the flickering lamp. There were more taps, and it became obvious they were heavy, driven drops of rain on the pane of glass. He exhaled, shakily, and his heart started again with a gallop. He giggled nervously at his foolishness, then stopped as the wind whipped the rain into lashing, pounding waves against the house.

          He turned back to the wardrobe and opened the door.

          Nothing sprang out at him. It was empty, and solid, and built into the wall. Knocking and pounding revealed no loose panels or echoing cavity behind the back, and the thin blade of his pocketknife found no entrance in crack or join. It simply smelled of dust and age. He sat back on his knees.

          So much for my last case, he thought bitterly. There was nothing more to do. He listened vacantly to the wind and rain howling beyond the window.

          The lock suddenly clanked and the bedroom door squawked open. Miss Kindermass stood looking down at the little man kneeling on the floor, the candle in her hand throwing shadows that emphasized her disapproving stare. She sniffed.

          "Supper's ready," she said. "Bring the lantern with you. We don't want any fires, now do we?" She gestured with the candle at the window. "And it looks like you'll be staying here tonight, I suppose. This storm isn't letting up any time soon."

          Supper proved to be a tasteless mash of turnips, not quite a soup and not quite a stew, and boiled beyond flavor and texture. While Abernathy toyed with his portion, Miss Kindermass tried to persuade her miniature sibling to eat more and the larger to at least go slower. The rain settled to a steady bucketing down, with the occasional crash of lightning. After the meal was done and her sisters settled again with fire and dog, she prepared the mystery chamber for his occupancy. This consisted of throwing an ancient horse-blanket on top of the bed and an old thunder-mug underneath.

          "Your last chance to find out anything useful, I suppose," she said, hand on the door. "Breakfast is at seven, and then you'll be on your way. We can't have a man hanging around here forever, especially after spending the night. What would the neighbors say? Good night, Mr. Abernathy." She was gone, taking the light, while his mind was still reeling with the implications of her words. The lock clicked. He was alone in the dark.

          More or less by feel, he removed his boots and crawled, otherwise fully clothed, under the covers. Despite his weariness, he stayed awake for what seemed forever, staring out into the darkness, thinking about his circumstances. Every now and then the room was lit by stabs of lightning. Eventually, somehow, he slept.

          Sometime in the night, he woke up. He couldn't tell quite when, for his watch had run down. The storm had settled and there was absolute quiet in the room. There was a pale, watery light, dimly blue, burning lowly, outlining the cracks in the wardrobe door. A strange faint chemical odor filled the room and tickled his nose.

          He sneezed and for a few seconds was afraid to open his eyes again, in case the eruption had blown the phenomenon away with its violence. A cautious peek showed the light still glimmering. As quietly as he could, he tossed the blanket off, got down from the bed, and tiptoed in his stocking feet to the wardrobe. He put a trembling hand to the pull, hesitated, then yanked it open in a flash.

          The back of the wall was just gone, disappeared. No door hanging open, no slot where it could have slid. In its place was a gap, a rough stone tunnel, illuminated by the phosphorescence, leading downward. He paused for just a second, thinking about going back for his boots, then steeled himself, and plunged forward into the passage.

          The little man felt rather than saw the wall close behind him. He almost turned, but then the light started to withdraw down the tunnel, as if it were being carried away. Rather than be left in darkness, he began following it. His teeth started to chatter. The floor was cold, damp, and uneven to his stockinged feet.

 

          "I must say, that was rather brave of you," Williams broke in. "Going through a mysterious portal, down a tunnel, without any of the usual precautions. I don't know that I would have done it."

          "I wish I hadn't," Abernathy moaned. "I wish I hadn't! The things I saw --"

          "Will be gotten to in their proper place," Frobisher said sternly. "Mr. Williams, please don't interrupt." He leaned forward on his cane, gestured. "Please go on, Abernathy."

The Case of Ambrose Abernathy (Part Two)

     "Miss Kindermass?" he managed at last. "I am Mr. Ambrose Abernathy, from the Department of Extranatural Affairs." He shuffled out his wallet and produced a card. She took it with her free hand and looked at it as if he had handed her a dead lizard. "We--I've come to do some follow-up investigation. You remember Mr. Sackett was here before..."

     The lady snorted. It pinched her nose even thinner.

     "And a fat lot of good he did. You people took your time getting back to us." She shifted the dog to get a better grip. "Well, I suppose you'd better come on in. Wipe your feet!" she added sharply.

     Abernathy desperately scuffled his feet on the mat, hung his hat on the coatrack behind the door, and hurried after the disappearing figure of Miss Kindermass into the dimness of the house. With the gathering clouds outside it was growing darker by the minute. He stumbled past obscure pictures and brushed by tiny tables burdened with dusty flowers and bell-jars, following the flag of the lady's rapidly receding skirts. She threw open a parlor door after a final sharp turn down a corridor, flooding the hall with the light of a blazing fire.

     The room inside was stifling and overstuffed with ormolu and chintz. He skittered to a halt, panting and wheezing, as the lady abruptly stopped, set the dog down, and with a precise gesture introduced him to what appeared to be an enormous bundle of laundry and a fragile china doll seated in deep frilly chairs by the fireplace.

     "My sisters," she said, "Miss Anne and Miss Sarah."

     He bowed hastily and began, "Ladies...," but at that instant the pug bounded over to the chairs and clambered enthusiastically up into the capacious lap of the larger sister. The attentions of both the seated ladies were immediately galvanized.

     "Poopschen!" Miss Anne oozed. Her voice was like a bubbling pot of lumpy oatmeal. She began vigorously scratching the beast behind the ears, and he spread himself in ecstasy, puddling his furry folds across her lap. "Has 'oo come to see your Mumsy? Yes 'oo has, yes 'oo has!"

     The tiny Miss Sarah spread her arms out to the dog, like a child asking to be picked up.

     "Oooh, Chessy, come see little meez!" she piped. "Hasn't Chessy got a little kissee for his little meez!"

     Abernathy looked back and forth at them as they caressed and cajoled the pug, at a loss for words. They seemed totally unaware of his presence. He cleared his throat and started again.

     "Ladies..."

     "It's no use, Mr. Abernathy, they're both cracked as cuckoos," the elder Miss Kindermass said matter-of-factly, as she turned away. "The only things they talk to are me and that demanding little creature."

     "Then why...?" he began.

     "It's only manners," she said abruptly. She frowned. "I suppose now you would want to get your investigation started. So we can get this over with?"

     "Oh, yes. Please." The agent hesitated. "Do you think before I begin, I could get a drink of water? I tried the well--"

     "That old thing hasn't worked in ages. I'd have thought that was obvious." She sniffed. "Come into the kitchen."

     The hall was even darker after the brightly lit parlor. As they passed the occasional window it was no better. Outside the clouds had swallowed up the setting sun, and a growing, grieving wind was starting to make its presence known.

     The kitchen was so filled with potted herbs that he gagged on the spiciness of the air. As he gulped down a glass of sulfurous yellow water that he had to pump himself, a low rumble of thunder rattled the plates in the cupboard. The elder Miss Kindermass -- he now thought of her as THE Miss Kindermass, as she had not supplied her first name -- tapped her toe while he drank. His throat tickled, somehow even scratchier after his refreshment, as she lit a lamp and led him back through the halls and into the apparent center of the disturbances.

     She swung open a heavy pine door at the very rear of the house.

     "The master bedroom," she announced. "This is where our father died, and from this room my brother Wallace vanished, over twenty years ago."

     The room was bare, absolutely bare, except for a sturdy bed draped in a dust cover and a huge built-in wardrobe. After the crowded nature of the rest of the house, it was like stepping into a lifeless arctic wasteland. With a grim, measured gate Miss Kindermass entered the space, lamp held high. It seemed to stream shadows more than light down into the room. The agent shivered. In the quivering flame, the bed looked like a squat, bestial specter.

     "Vanished," she continued. "And with him, his beloved bitch, Topsy. Over the years, several other dogs have gone missing from this house. Spotty, Gertrude, Mattie, Brownie, Lucinda, Ginger..."

     She sniffed. Abernathy looked up at her and was surprised to see tears watering in those severe blue eyes. She sniffed again and shook herself.

     "These disappearances always centered on this room. The girls would be gone, and we would find the door hanging ajar. We kept it up, you know, as a guest room, but eventually we stripped it down and put a lock on it, and since we got Chester, we've had no problems with the other phenomena. But I still worry."

     "Other phenomena?" The little agent hastily pulled out his notepad and a stub of a pencil. "What other phenomena would those be?"

     "I told your man Sackett all that." She frowned. "Didn't he report any of it?"

     Abernathy thought guiltily of the dossier that he had glanced over briefly in contempt, now lying buried some certain fathoms below the earth inside his lost kit.

     "Oh, well, of course," he stammered. "But we like to go over it again firsthand. Confirmation from primary sources, and so on. Just to make sure, you understand?" He smiled at her and nodded his head, trying vainly to garner assent.

     The lady sighed wearily.

     "The stupid waste of it all! Our tax dollars at work, I suppose. Not to mention the time. Very well. There are sounds, every now and then, not very loud, like groans or rumbles, not human, you know, not voices, but not the house settling. I know that sound very well, and this is nothing like it, so don't try to persuade me that it is."

     "Oh, no, of course not," he said. His pencil flew over the notepad.

     "And some people have said they've seen a pale, fishy kind of light. I never have, myself." She walked over to the window and set the lamp down on the sill. "They can never tell quite where it's coming from. But I have smelled the smell."

     "The smell?"

     "Please don't ask me to describe it; it's like nothing I've ever known. The most I can say is that it has something of a chemical tang, but also earthy, somehow. Oh, how can one explain a smell? Other people have smelled it, and have had the same difficulty as I."

     Abernathy raised his eyes.

     "Other people...?"

     "Cleaning girls; we used to have them. Also, neighbors and friends, when they would still visit. Dead now, most of them, or too old to get about, and the young folk don't care to ... well, the young are mostly unpleasant people, anyway." She shrugged, and closed up again, like a touch-me-not.

     "Well, are you going to start 'investigating' then?" she asked.

     "Of course, Miss Kindermass," he said hurriedly. What a lonely life she must lead, he thought, and felt ashamed of the sudden personal insight behind the spiky old woman's facade. The case, the case, he reminded himself. "Would you mind leaving me alone for a bit, while I perform the preliminary examination?"

     "What? Why?" Her voice was sharp with suspicion.

     "Well, I need quiet … the etheric vibrations ... psychic emanations, and so on ... don't want to skew the readings and impressions -- strong personal influence, don't you know..."

     "Sounds like a bunch of humbug to me. Well, I have to check on Anne and Sarah anyway, and start supper." She passed him and headed out the door. She turned quickly with one hand on the knob before she left, a finger on the other raised in warning.

     "No pulling up the floorboards, mind. Or punching holes in the walls, either."

     Abernathy, who had begun to relax a little as she left, contracted once more in alarm.

     "No, of course not, ma'am, of course not!"

     She shook her head vigorously once, in grim, satisfied affirmation, and pulled the grinding door shut.  Abernathy heard the lock click with a little jump of his heart. He was alone in the desolate room.

Notes

Of course there had to be three old spinster sisters at the house; that's traditional, almost like the Three Witches or Triple Goddesses in the old tales. 

I'm sorry I do not have the LOTR post that might nave been expected today just yet; I'm feeling uncommonly lazy on this cool morning. Perhaps later this afternoon, if I can get more steam up.