The Hungering God Read online

  Chapter Two

  Arkham

  November 20, 1929

  Arkham was slowly dying under the late autumn sun, or so it seemed to him. There had always been something wrong about the town, something moldering and rank under the skin, but now its true face grinned from beneath its cracking mask. Raker could taste its slow death in the river mist running through the streets, lingering now long after dawn. He could see it in the paint flaking from signs above boarded windows. He could feel it in the eyes that followed him and then vanished when he turned to look back. There was no one else on the lonely street, just scraps of yellow newspaper scuttling over the sidewalks with the dry leaves. He had stopped several times on his way to the old Merchant District, each time certain that he was being watched, and each time he had seen nothing. Of course, that didn’t mean anything.

  I should not have come back, he thought as he ducked down a narrow alley between neglected buildings. The wet reek of the river was thick in his nose, and the chill that reached under his jacket had a clammy caress. He stopped after ten paces and looked back at the alley mouth, reassured by the weight of the hammerless automatic tucked into his belt in the small of his back, its steel cold against his spine.

  It had been four months since he had left Arkham, hanging onto the bottom of a train in the night, four months of looking over his shoulder. They would come, he knew, and not just the musclemen out of Boston, but someone worse. He did not know who, or what, but he was certain they would come. You did not live through the things he had without consequences. Perhaps if he had run far enough and fast enough he would have been able to disappear, but he would not have been able to forget. His dreams would have never allowed him that peace.

  He had nothing now of his old life. All that was left to him was Arkham, and the secrets it cradled to its chest as it rotted and died.

  He waited, eyes fixed on the slice of grey light at the alley’s end, his heart a steady beat in his ears.

  Nothing.

  Just a feeling dancing across his nerves like the wind—just like before.

  Raker let out a long breath, which he did not realize he had been holding, and turned to move down the alley.

  “Spare some change?”

  Raker leapt back, his hand moving to the butt of his gun as he whirled. The figure sat curled at the base of the brick wall, his legs and hands folded into a frayed coat. The wind had gathered a drift of trash and dry leaves around him, and it was only when he had moved that he became anything but another shape blurring at the edge of sight. Eyes glinted at Raker from a bearded face under a shapeless cap. He looked at the grime-stained hand extended toward him, palm open. After a second Raker shook himself and his hand drift away from the small of his back.

  “Sure,” he mumbled, and dug in the pocket of his jacket. In truth, different times would have seen people assume he was a beggar himself; his suit was mismatched, its edges frayed and its fabric leeched of color by washes that had not removed the patina of deep stains. Grime and sleepless night had stolen the handsomeness he’d once traded on from his face, leaving lines and a hard edge to his rare smiles. He was one of a growing breed; the children of a world which wore the soiled finery of the past while shuffling blank-eyed to an unknown end. It was a world in which Charles Raker had yet to touch the bottom. “Take care of yourself,” said Raker, and dropped a few coins into the man’s hand.

  “Bless you, friend,” said the beggar as his fingers closed over the copper and nickel coins. Raker nodded and glanced back down the alley.

  “You never saw me,” said Raker. “Got it?”

  “You bought my blindness, friend,” said the beggar, and Raker saw teeth flash from amongst the matted beard. For a second he paused, caught by something he could not grasp. Then he shook himself, and moved down the alley. Behind him the beggar rolled the coins through his fingers and watched Raker with bright eyes.

  Raker stopped when he reached the lower end of the alley. The building he wanted was on the opposite side of the street. It had been a warehouse, but the sign above its loading doors told of a different purpose: “House of Solace” it proclaimed in black letters which were flaking away from the sagging white board. A small door with a brass handle sat closed next to the loading bay. Raker glanced up and down the street and checked his watch. The street was empty, and it was time. His eyes flicked back to the House of Solace, and caught the line of yellow chalk on the brickwork beside the green side door. The line ran diagonally down from left to right; just as agreed. Raker did not move.

  A full minute past the agreed meeting time slid around the face of his watch, then five, then ten, and still he watched.

  After fifteen minutes he unfolded from the alley’s shadows and moved across the street. The gun was in his hand, held loose at his side. He was just into the narrow passage beside the House of Solace when the side door opened. Raker went still and watched as a thin man in a badly fitting suit looked up and down the street and then muttered something under his breath.

  The man was thin and his skin looked clammy, as if the day was ten degrees hotter. To Raker’s eyes he looked like the kind who began the day with too much coffee and ended it with too much liquor.

  The man was turning back to pull the door shut when Raker slid out of the shadows. He was beside the man before he could turn around.

  “Very still!” hissed Raker into the man’s ear, and nudged the barrel of the pistol into the man’s ribs, “Understand?” The man nodded quickly, his tongue flicking over his lips before he spoke.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” said the man.

  “Back inside. Once we are through the door stay a pace in front of me.”

  The man nodded again and pushed the door into the House of Solace. Gloom filled the space beyond, broken by grimy streams of light from sky lights in the high roof. Dust rose in thick clouds from their steps and the air smelled as if it had not moved for a long time. The room had been a loading bay, and it rose to the full height of the building and ran back to a series of brick arches covered in chipped blue plaster. Banners hung from its walls, all showing variations of an emblem of two hands clasped together.

  Raker’s eyes fastened on the symbol and cold memories rose through him. He remembered Stonegroves House glittering in the soft dark of a summer night, he remembered the dead piled on the rich carpets, and figures in grey robes. He thought of silvered broaches and rings carrying that symbol on the hands of murderers who had killed hundreds for a lie masquerading as hope. He blinked and shivered as he forced the memories out of his mind.

  The thin-faced man had taken five steps into the room in front of him.

  “That’s far enough,” said Raker. The man turned, and went still when he noticed the gun still pointing at him.

  “You Raker?” the man asked.

  Raker nodded, his gun never wavering from a dead line with the man’s heart. “Tucker?” He replied.

  The man nodded vigorously, saying, “You said you wanted help, Mr. Raker, that we could help each other, that we could do each other a favor.” He gave a nervous smile that showed broken teeth cheaply replaced. “But you don’t seem like a man who wants help to me. You look like a man out for blood.” Tucker grinned again, and ran the cuff of his sleeve across his forehead. Raker could see a fresh sheen of sweat form on the man’s pale skin. “Not sure I want a story that much as I’m willing to get shot for it,” Tucker ran on nervously, eyeing the pistol poised to end his life.

  “You don’t know what the story is yet, Tucker,” said Raker.

  “So what have you got?” said Tucker. “Ball’s in your court it looks like.” Tucker’s eyes were still on the gun in Raker’s hand as he lowered the pistol to his side but remained wrapped in his fingers—a threat deferred, but not removed.

  “Have you ever heard of Stonegroves?” asked Raker. Tucker frowned.

  “Stone—”

  “Helena Bradbury?” Raker said the name before Tucker could finish his question. Tucker
shook his head, still frowning as Raker carried right on. “Heard about a party that a lot of important people went to and never came back?”

  “What? …No.” Tucker flicked a glance up at Raker’s face, studying him, and Raker could see the doubt behind the man’s eyes, the nervousness warring with an increasing sense that he had made a bad decision coming there. Raker wasn’t surprised; he’d stopped expecting others to look at you like a sane human when you told them the truth.

  “Look I don’t know about—,” Tucker began.

  “Over a hundred people go to a party.” Raker’s voice rose harshly, and Tucker went quiet. Raker stared at him, his eyes bright and hard in the half-light. “Not a small party, and not small people—glittering the way only real money can make something glitter. The house they go to is old and huge, and people know about it for miles around. You see, it’s a bad place, built on the wrong ground; that’s what some say if the conversation turns that way and the person talking happens to be from Arkham, where things like that don’t get laughed at, and for good reason.”

  Raker looked away from Tucker, his eyes going up to the shaft of dust-filled light falling from the skylights above. “But the people who buy the house don’t care about that, money you see, but not local, not Arkham.

  “Oh, people talk about the owners as well; their name runs good all the way to high places, spoken of well in drawing rooms and country clubs, so when they invite people to a party, people come. They come in masks and jewels, trying to outdo one another, but in truth it is no party, no party at all. The guests have been invited to their own murder. Every last one bleeds out, and the fine people who own the house hold the knives. And then…”

  Raker paused, and for a second he just watched the dust motes stirring in the weak light. Tucker was watching Raker, still frowning but eyes unmoving, waiting, like a mouse might watch a cat to see whether it will attack. After a long minute Raker spoke again. “Then something happens, and it’s gone: the people, the house, everything. All forgotten; like they were never there.”

  Silence filled the seconds after Raker finished speaking and Tucker licked his lips carefully before he thought of replying.

  To Tucker it sounded insane, of course, like the ravings of a fantasist. A while ago he might have filed it to the pulps as a “true-life ghost story,” the type of bunk that everyone read but no one believed. He might still do that, just as news of Raker himself might well be a commodity worth selling to certain interested parties in Boston’s underworld who he owed big, but he had bigger fish to fry for the moment. Besides, his time in Arkham, short as it had been, had tested the boundaries of his own sense of the impossible. Now he just needed to get the rest from Raker without seeming too eager for the story. He had his own payday to think of, after all.

  “Except you remember it all?” Tucker asked at last, trying to put just enough incredulity in his voice to sound convincing, but not so much as to shut Raker down.

  Raker nodded, still not looking at Tucker, the gun still in his hand at his side.

  “The house was called Stonegroves, and the people who owned it were called Bradbury.”

  “Never heard of it or them,” said Tucker, in a voice which was stronger than he felt. Tucker hissed out a breath from his nose and shook his head again. Raker was still looking off into space.

  Something has snapped in this man, Tucker realized. He’d seen the look on men that had come through the trenches. Something inside him is just not there anymore.

  “They were real,” said Raker, and looked straight at him. Tucker saw it now, a dead look to the eyes behind their hardness, like metal coins covering empty sockets.

  He shivered despite himself, but kept talking. “And why would someone do that?” Tucker gestured to the air. “Kill so many people, like that?”

  Raker did not move. “You heard of the Hand of Solace?

  “Sure, you mentioned them,” Tucker shot back, “so I did my homework when you said to meet here.

  “Charitable fellowship started here in Arkham a year or two back, but kinda gone quiet of late. They are supposed to help people who have lost everything. These days there’s a lot that are that way, a lot buying what they’re selling, I suppose. This building was their place, where they started, but they don’t use it anymore.”

  “Lyman Fields?”

  Tucker ignored the question and tried to keep his face neutral. He licked his lips and gave a weak chuckle to cover his nerves. “You saying they were mixed up in this…party?”

  “I am giving you a thread, Tucker; you want the rest, I have to know if you are going to live up to your side of the deal. Murder, mayhem, scandal, and wealth—you can sell that coast to coast and you know it.”

  Tucker raised his hands. “Slow down. So far all you have given me is a story that no one but you will think is true, no proof—cold print, paper trail, some nice black and whites even. Can you give me any of that?” Tucker felt his heart racing inside his chest and sweat prickling the skin of his forehead.

  Raker said nothing and Tucker forced himself to talk as if Raker’s stillness was not making him think of running while he had the chance. “So now I am going to ask you something, and then we will see if I even want to start to believe you.” His tongue flicked across his lips before he could stop it. He took a breath and played the first of his cards. “I looked you up, Raker, took some time and a little money, but I got there. I got some connections.” He shook his head as if in apology. “Those debts of yours in Boston don’t just go away, and those kinds of people don’t forget.”

  The gun came up in Raker’s hand, the muzzle an empty echo of Raker’s eyes. Tucker took a step back. “Easy, they don’t know where you are, and I didn’t give you up. Like I said on the wire, I think we can be useful to each other and I don’t like making enemies.”

  “Useful?” said Raker carefully, and did not lower the gun.

  “You have skills I don’t, Raker. You can go places I can’t.”

  “Can’t or won’t.”

  Tucker shrugged. “What’s the difference?” He had to turn all the cards face up—well, almost all the cards.

  “Now here’s where you could maybe help me. There’s this girl, Daisy Walker, and a hard case, a man called Morgan, Tony Morgan.” Tucker paused, but there was no hint of recognition on Raker’s face. “You see, there’s a man with a lot of money that’s after them, a lot of dough and a lot of clout. They’re somewhere here in Arkham, and he needs them found.”

  “So find them,” Raker retorted, and pulled the gun up level with Tucker’s face and held it there unwavering. “What’s it to do with me?”

  “Hey!” Tucker raised his hands again, this time as if in surrender. “Look, I ain’t cut out for the rough stuff, not like you; hell, I’m having a hard time not pissing myself right now with that heater pointed at me. But you, you got a reputation, Raker, a reputation that says you can handle yourself and I don’t doubt it. You could find them; me, I just want a finder’s fee, cut of the take.”

  Tucker bit his lip and waited. For the first time Raker smiled; it was not a kind smile, but a slow crack spreading up the cheeks under cold steel eyes.

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Because of some of the other people who are after them, after the girl in particular, so my information tells me. They got feelers out all over New England, only because of my guy’s interest, the one with the money, nobody’s buying, even if they did know.”

  “Who? Who’s looking for her?”

  It was Tucker’s turn to smile as he raised his fingers to the enfolding gloom of the House of Solace in an expansive gesture. “Oh, I think you know already. You see, that’s why you got me interested.”

  “Tell me!” Raker demanded, and Tucker laid it all out for him.

  * * *

  The sun was a low arc of hot-iron orange in the sky as Raker and Tucker finally left the House of Solace. Thin mist rose afresh from the river and snaked through the town, coiling
through streets and stroking the grimy windows.

  Tucker left first, slipping from the small green door into the streets growing shadows. Hurrying away, he did not look back.

  Raker emerged several minutes later. He stood in the gloom, pulling up the collar of his jacket and pulling it close. He turned, watching the street for a lengthening moment. Only the leaves moved, stirring slowly in the mist-thickened breeze. Finally he stepped into the street and began to walk toward the light of the dim sun. After he had taken four steps, he stopped and turned sharply, eyes scanning the fronts and blind windows of the buildings.

  His head twitched as if straining to catch a faint sound. For a second his mouth opened as if he was going to call out. Then he shook himself and walked on.

  Above the street, something slid across the moss-covered roof tiles. Frost formed in its wake, glittering in the faltering light.

  * * *

  The blue door opened before the silver-topped cane could knock a third time. The footman looked down at the man who stood on the doorstep in the chill air.

  “Good morning,” said the man, smiling up at the footman. He wore a black coat of fine fabric over charcoal black. His face was narrow, lined by age and framed by a neat, white beard. A pair of clasped silver hands capped the black cane which the caller returned to his side. The man looked as if he was in mourning. The footman’s eyes met the caller’s cold blue gaze. “My name is Dr. Lyman Fields. I expect they are waiting for me.”

  The footman frowned. There was something familiar about the old man, but he did not recognize him, and the Silver Twilight Lodge did not expect visits from those they did not know.

  “I am afraid…,” began the footman.

  “Let him pass,” came a voice from beyond the open door.