The Devourer Below Read online

  Fern’s face was expressionless. “I never said that.”

  Holsten frowned, but didn’t protest. If she thought she was going to scare him, she was wrong. He’d once trailed a madman through a snowstorm; this was nothing. She led him away from her office and down the corridor.

  Fern kept up a tour guide’s commentary as they walked. “The secure wing houses around fifteen patients at any one time. Drew has been here the longest. Due to his compulsions, we can’t let him interact with the rest of the patients – even supervised, he’s a danger to himself and others.”

  “Has he tried to escape?”

  Fern glanced at him. “Once or twice. Along with his compulsion to eat human flesh, he seems to be gripped by an irregular mania – usually brought on by emotional distress. At that point there’s nothing much you can do with him, save sedate him.”

  Holsten, despite wanting to ask more about the mania, simply said, “I’m surprised anyone’s brave enough to get that close.” He’d decided to keep his questions to a minimum. It wouldn’t do for Fern to think him too eager.

  Fern sighed. “Philip is not a monster, Mr Holsten. He is not a boogeyman to be feared, but rather someone to be pitied. Despite the moniker the newspapers hung on him, he’s no more a wolf-man than you are.”

  Holsten nodded. “I never claimed he was. I’ve been studying anthropophagic compulsions for years – mostly out west and up north. I’ve found that cannibalism is often the result of environmental stressors – not just hunger, mind, but also isolation, weather, and even the pull of the moon on the waters of the brain – which are then filtered through cultural and religious perceptions. Cannibalism is a relatively rare occurrence, but our perception of it lends it a weight that is far out of proportion.”

  Fern glanced at him again, more appraisingly this time. “An interesting theory.”

  “Hopefully my publishers will agree,” Holsten said, with a laugh. Fern didn’t join in. She seemed a humorless woman. Then, in his experience, working in a place like this often sucked the joy right out of a person. He’d learned swiftly that such places were not for him. He much preferred being a writer.

  The walk was an uneventful one. Despite all the stories he’d heard, the sanatorium was no ancient asylum, full of gibbering prisoners or brutal treatments. It was a modern facility, run by a modern staff. Fern’s presence alone proved that. Patients wandered freely, but always under careful observation by the orderlies who seemed to stand sentinel everywhere he looked. He clutched his bag more tightly.

  Each wing of the sanatorium was separated from the others by a set of heavy doors, as well as a desk. Orderlies were stationed at each desk, in order to check IDs and paperwork. Fern ushered him past the desk guarding the path to the secure wing with little difficulty. The orderly barely looked at them, being more intent on his copy of the Arkham Advertiser.

  Finally, Fern gave a discreet cough. Startled, the orderly looked up. “Oh, hiya, doc. I didn’t have you on the roster for today.”

  Fern glanced at Holsten. “Schedule change, Rodney. Not my idea.”

  “Who you here for?”

  “Drew,” Fern said. Rodney took a key off the board and handed it to her. Holsten set his bag down on the desk.

  “Do you need to check me over?” he asked. “Make sure I’m not hiding a file in a cake or something?”

  “Did you bring a cake?” Rodney asked.

  “Well, no.”

  “Then why would I care what you hid in it?” Rodney grinned, to show he was joking. “You’re with the doc, that’s good enough for me. Abandon all hope and such.”

  Holsten blinked. “What?”

  “Ignore him. Rodney read a book once and he never lets us forget it.” Fern had a slight smile on her face as she spoke, and Rodney guffawed. Holsten got the sense the two knew each other well. “Come on.”

  She led Holsten through the doors and into the secure wing. It was quieter here than in the rest of the building, presumably because none of the inmates were allowed to roam about. That was not to say it was silent.

  There were sobs and shrieks, the pounding of fists and bellowed protests. A cacophony of the lost and the damned. All of it muffled by the thick cell doors that lined either wall, each one a matte black rectangle with a single viewing slot set into it at eye level.

  Only one door was silent. Holsten knew who was behind it before Fern said anything. She indicated the door. “This is his.”

  Holsten nodded, clutching his bag to his chest. He wondered if Drew knew they were there – maybe he could hear them, or smell them. If so, there was no indication. Fern unlocked the door and stepped back as it swung open. “Philip? It’s Dr Fern. I’ve come to speak with you again, if you’re up to it.”

  Silence. The interior of the cell was dark, and the smell – it reminded Holsten of a wolf’s den he’d once had the bad fortune to stumble on. Noticing his discomfiture, Fern said, “We have electricity rigged up throughout the building, but Philip has asked that we keep the lights off in his cell. They hurt his eyes, or so he claims.” She cleared her throat, as she had with the orderly. “Philip?”

  Inside the cell, someone grunted, and springs squeaked. Squinting, Holsten perceived a lanky, pale shape unfolding off a cot. The man had been laying with his face pressed to the wall. He was naked, his lean frame pockmarked by scars, and his face resembled a waxen mask beneath a shaggy salt and pepper mane.

  “He’s naked,” Holsten said.

  “He doesn’t like clothes. Tears them to ribbons. Easier just to avert your eyes.”

  Drew set his bare feet on the floor, but did not rise. “Dr Fern?” he croaked, in a voice rusty from disuse. “Is it time for our appointment?”

  “No, Philip. This visit is unscheduled.”

  Yellow eyes rolled in deep sockets until they settled on Holsten. He felt a flicker of fear as he met that placid, yet somehow malign, gaze. It was like meeting the eye of a tiger at the zoo. The animal appeared content, but that contentment was merely a mask.

  Drew rose; he was taller than Holsten had thought. His nudity made him seem only more of an animal. There was nothing lewd about it, the way there might have been with another patient. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Philip, this is Mr Holsten. He wants to talk with you, if you’re up to it.”

  “About what?” Drew continued to stare. Holsten wondered whether it was simple curiosity, or something else. He shifted his weight, trying to hide his sudden nervousness.

  He screwed up his courage and spoke. “Your story, Mr Drew – Philip. May I call you Philip? I’d like to ask you about your troubles, if I might.”

  Drew blinked. He looked at Fern. “I’m hungry, doctor.” He said it almost plaintively. As if it were an affliction, rather than a simple fact of biology.

  “It’s in your mind, Philip. You’ve eaten today, I’m told. Whatever you’re feeling – this craving – it isn’t physical.” Fern spoke quickly, the words rote. Holsten wondered how often this conversation had played out between them.

  Drew nodded. “I know. I know it’s in my head. Unfortunately, it’s my stomach you need to convince.” He gave a sorrowful chuckle at his own joke, and his attentions swung back to Holsten. “Why?” he asked.

  Startled, Holsten said, “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to know my story?”

  “I – ah – a book. I’m writing a book.”

  “About me?”

  “People like you.”

  Drew smiled, showing his teeth. They were long and seemed not altogether right for the shape of his mouth. “Cannibals, you mean.”

  “Yes, if you like.”

  Drew studied him for a moment, and then sat back down on his cot. He stared at his hands for a moment, then stiffened. Head tilted, he seemed to listen intently to something for a moment, then gave a resigned nod. “Very well
. Where would you like me to begin?”

  “The beginning, if you would.”

  Drew’s expression became positively saturnine. “The beginning? If you like.” And, hesitantly, he began to speak.

  •••

  How to start? I will not bore you with how I came to join the army, or why. Suffice to say, I was motivated by the usual foolishness that a man my age ought to know better than to succumb to, but so rarely does. I wasn’t the only alumnus of Miskatonic to precede our nation into the war – there was that tow-headed devil, West, for instance. Like him, I joined a Canadian regiment, and was a first lieutenant by 1915.

  Nor will I waste breath on describing those first fear-fraught months at the front. The noise, the smell – it was an alien world, far removed from the gambrel roofs and narrow lanes of Arkham. I may as well have been on Mars. Despite it all, I am told I was an exemplary soldier. My parents own – owned – a farm out near Aylesbury Pike, halfway to Dunwich, and I grew up knowing how to pot what I aimed at. Though it must be said that rabbits are not known for shooting back.

  We – us and the Germans both – made a charnel house of Flanders. I toughed out gas attacks and raids. I could swing a mattock with the best of them, and when the enemy came over the lip, I met them with whatever was to hand. I learned the fine art of cooking rats and shoe leather. I learned to relieve myself where I hunkered, so as to better keep warm.

  In a word, I survived. That is all any man can do in such awful conditions. I survived assaults and counterassaults, sickness and bombardment. More, I survived the stupidity of my superiors, and their superiors. I survived it all. Though sometimes I wish I had not.

  No, forgive me – I am fine. I will continue. My story – the part of it you wish to hear – begins in 1915, in Flanders. Specifically, Chateau Wood, near Hooge. I was part of a detachment ordered to… Well. It does not matter now, I suppose. The war is done, and my part in it is of little importance. Suffice it to say, we did not succeed in our mission, and none of us made it back to the safety of our lines.

  I alone survived the disastrous affair, though I was left with a bullet in my leg – you can see the scar here – and an accompanying infection. Injured and delirious, I found myself wandering in the emptiness between our lines and those of the enemy – a wasteland of shattered trees, burned out houses and mud.

  The mud is what I remember most. An odd thing, I know, but some days it seemed the whole of our world was a purgatory of mud and smoke. Worse were the great boreholes that had been gouged in the earth by incessant bombardment. They reminded me of graves waiting to be filled, and, more than once, I fancied I saw maggots of immense size squirming in these craterous wounds – but it was only ever smoke and shadows.

  I do not know how long I wandered. It is trite to say time had no meaning, and yet for me it did not. The days bled into one another, and it seemed that the whole world had been emptied of life, save the dogs. I never saw them, but I knew they were there, for I heard them howling in the distance or even, in my less lucid moments, beneath my feet, and I often saw where they had been at the dead.

  Indeed, they were my constant companions. However far I travelled, wherever I hid, their howls reached me. In my growing delirium, I fancied that they were guiding me somewhere. When their cries grew faint, I found my path altered until they became loud once more. I did not mean to follow them – I simply did.

  I stumbled on and on, day into night. The guns thundered and the war progressed, but I noticed none of it, even as I took cover from rolling banks of poisonous fog, or buried myself in mud to escape the attentions of distant passersby. Ally or enemy, I could not tell, and I had not the heart to risk it. Fear was my armor.

  I had no destination in mind, no desire, save to go where the dogs wished. They led me a merry trek, along shattered roads and through burnt-out fields, and in my delirious state I was only too happy to follow. At night, when I allowed myself rest, I tried to dig the bullet from my leg – though with no success.

  Finally, I could walk no farther. My injured leg ceased to bear my weight at an inopportune moment, tumbling me into an abandoned section of trench line. Racked by pain, I crawled across splintered duck boards. I could hear something moving around me, within the very walls of the trench, just out of sight – rats, I thought then. I know better now.

  I called out, I think, but received no reply save a distant howling. The dogs were abandoning me, or so I feared. Survival of the fittest. I howled for them, clawing at the mud and dragging my useless leg. I was wholly mad by then. Feverish and starving, having drunk no water save what I had gleaned from filthy craters.

  But my delirium was not so great that I could not recognize death when it was rolling towards me. Every soldier grew to fear the tang on the air that heralded the yellow cloud. It crept down the trench behind me, filling every nook and cranny with lethal inevitability.

  Frantic, I turned and spied a body, half-sunk into the muddy wall of the trench. I could not tell his nationality, nor did I care – all that concerned me was the battered gas mask in his stiffened, claw-like hands.

  I scrambled to the body and wrestled with it, trying to tear the mask from the corpse’s grip. The closer the cloud drew, the angrier I became – as if the dead man intended to spite me. I cursed and wept, pleading and screaming.

  Finally, I seized upon a rock and hammered at his hands, reducing them to pulp. I tore the mask free even as the first tendrils of yellow caressed the trench wall. I dragged on the mask just in time. The world turned a sickly shade of jaundice, and where the cloud touched my bare skin, I burned. But better burning than drowning. I huddled against the corpse, seeking shelter in the mud, waiting for the fog to pass over or disperse.

  Then, through the befouled lenses of the mask, I saw black shapes emerge from the cloud and prowl down the trench line. My first thought was that it was an offensive, by one side or the other. But as they drew close, and I saw the mishmash of gear and uniforms, I recognized them for what they were – scavengers.

  There had been rumors, of course. And deserters were common enough. But to see them, to witness their desecration of the dead for myself – I could scarcely believe it. The sight of them shocked me into lucidity, and my first instinct was to look for a weapon. As I said, I’d heard the rumors, and I knew what such men would do if they caught me.

  But as I searched for something to defend myself with, I heard a metallic shink and the barrel of a pistol dug into the base of my skull. “Hello. What’s this, then?” a muffled voice murmured. An English accent, though I couldn’t be sure.

  A strong hand gripped my shoulder and flung me onto my back, jostling my injured leg in the process. I’m afraid I screamed in pain – and passed out.

  I still recall something of my dreams – they haunt me even now. Of squirming, pallid bodies and tumbling earth. Of mountains of corpses, and the sound of teeth. Of eating and eating and eating–

  Forgive me. Sometimes all of it gets the best of me. The hunger is a weight, sitting in my stomach, dragging me down into darkness. The more I struggle against it, the heavier it becomes. I am always so hungry – oh so hungry… No. No. Thank you, Dr Fern. I… I am capable of continuing. I want to continue.

  When I awoke, I found myself laying on a bed of sacking in a gloomy redoubt, lit by lanterns and candles. There were maybe a dozen other men crammed into the shelter. They spoke to one another in low voices, or played cards. Some were eating, and my stomach gave a treacherous rumble as I smelled the heady scent of trench stew. None of them paid me any mind, not even when I issued a hoarse greeting.

  Then, one turned and came to my side. He crouched beside me, forcing me to lay back. “Easy there. You’ve had a time of it, and you’re not shipshape just yet.” It was the same voice I’d heard in the trench. The Englishman was short and broad, with a heavy growth of bramble-like beard. He introduced himself as Ramsden – a former general
practitioner from Hartlepool, I came to learn.

  He was also the closest thing the scavengers had to a leader. He was more solicitous than one might have thought, though in a rough sort of way. The war had that effect on some men, wearing away any sheen of respectability they might once have possessed.

  “It would have done for you, soon enough,” he said, showing me the offending bullet as if it were a trophy. “Tried to get it out yourself, didn’t you?”

  I nodded mutely, and he chuckled. “I figured that’s why your leg looked like it had been near as gnawed off. You’re lucky. Fever broke almost as soon as I had it out, and the wound clean. You’re a tough lad, right enough.”

  “Thank you for saving me,” I said. “I thought…” I hesitated, not wanting to offend my rescuer. He smiled.

  “Thought you were for the stewpot, eh?”

  I laughed. “In a manner of speaking.”

  Ramsden made himself comfortable. “I won’t lie, if I’d thought you weren’t liable to survive, I might have put you out of your misery there and then. Only the strong survive here – the rest are naught but meat.” He said it solemnly, as if it were nothing more than plain truth, but the words made me shudder.

  We spoke at length, though I cannot now recall the substance of that conversation. At some point he went and procured a cup of stew for me, as well as water. Though the stew tasted strange, I tucked in. As I greedily ate, Ramsden told me about him and his fellows. Like me, it seemed, they were largely victims of circumstance. Or so Ramsden insisted.

  They were men with no loyalty save to one another. The relentless grind of battle had worn away all nationalism, making patriots into survivors. They endured a twilight existence in the cartographic gaps between the lines, scavenging what they needed but otherwise taking no part in the greater conflict. They could not return to their fellows, for they would be shot as deserters – or worse.

  And, for better or worse, I was now one of them. As you might imagine, I was somewhat taken aback by this – but I am ashamed to say I saw the appeal. My experiences had, if not quite broken me, then surely battered my youthful certainties. All that I had seen, all that I had endured – there seemed no point to any of it. Ramsden spoke quietly of all that he had experienced, and I found myself in agreement with his weary philosophy.