Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois (56 page)

“Oh, there is, professor; there is!” He turned and began writing something down on a scrap of paper then handed it to me. “That’s the address of my home in Dean’s Corners. It’s still in my name although my family have been trying to get it transferred into theirs. For now though, all the material I’ve managed to gather since my memory began to return is still there. You’ll find the key to the house hidden in the gutter over the back door. My family is in Florida for the season so you should be able to stay as long as you need without fear of being disturbed. My notes and other things are in the study. With the door key, you’ll find a second, smaller key. That’s for the locked cabinet in my desk. Use it. And professor, you shouldn’t waste any time in getting to Dean’s Corners. It won’t take long for those who’ve been following me to figure out that they need to search my home for anything they need to destroy.”

“Thank you…”

“No need to thank me if you’ll do one small favor.”

“If it’s nothing…”

“When you open the cabinet, you’ll find a star shaped stone object inside; can you bring it back to me here?”

“Yes, if it’s not against the hospital’s rules.”

“I assure you it isn’t. Just remember to bring it to me. You will, won’t you?”

I assured him I would and taking the note with the address on it, I bid him goodbye. He watched me leave by the open door.

Although when Walker had given me the assignment I’d been somewhat annoyed at the whole thing, I admit that by the time I left the hospital, my curiosity had been piqued. I found myself eager for a little expedition of my own out to Dean’s Corners, a small town in the central part of the state known mostly for its number of elite private academies.

Although I gave no credence to Sanders’ story, his invitation to visit his home in Dean’s Corners, which is next door to often mysterious and backward Dunwich, struck me as possibly being of some interest. So, with Walker’s permission, I set out the following Saturday traveling north on Route 128.

Near noon, I left the highway at the old Aylesbury Pike interchange and gradually, the urban landscape of the eastern part of Massachusetts gave way to more open country. By the time I’d driven another hour or so, farmland predominated with the occasional roadside produce stand deserted and waiting for warmer months. At last, a roadside marker welcomed me to Dean’s Corners, established 1742.

Private homes began to make their appearance again as the strange, steep hills that gave the town much of its character came into view. Historic signs named them off: Gibbet Hill, Throne Hill, Castle Hill. From what I could tell, Dean’s Corners was a typical New England town with a main street lined with local businesses including the usual attorney and real estate offices, a café or two, a local branch bank, and a dozen or so consignment and antique shops. Consulting my GPS device, I turned off at Hollis by the Congregational Church and, driving past the public cemetery, found the road I wanted. Sanders’ home was only a few hundred feet farther on. I’m not sure what I’d expected but it wasn’t the pleasant little Cape that I found. It was set a ways back from the road behind some overgrown hedges that Sanders’ family obviously hadn’t been keeping up with.

I drove a little ways up the paved drive and stopped in front of the garage which was attached to the house. Paint was peeling on the door and pretty much everywhere else. The front lawn was shaggy to say the least, and branches downed by some recent storm littered the roof.

At least it looked as if I wouldn’t have to worry about any family members wondering what a stranger was doing entering the house.

Leaving the car, I took my briefcase and made my way around the back. There, the yard was also unkempt but screened from the view of any neighbors by overgrown pine trees and other brush. There was evidence that local deer had been nosing about.

I discovered the back door and after climbing onto a wooden garden chair and feeling about the gutter, found the keys secured against the weather in a plastic sandwich bag. The larger key fit the lock. Pushing in the swollen door, I stepped into the garage where a vehicle was stored covered in a sheet. Ignoring it, I entered the kitchen through an inside door and wasted little time locating the study.

Luckily, it was at the back of the house where any activity wouldn’t be noticed by the neighbors. I set down my briefcase and shrugged out of my overcoat. The furnace was operational but was obviously set at a low temperature. At a glance, the desk top was clear with the usual accoutrements in their proper places. So I picked out the smaller key from the plastic bag and sitting in the padded swivel chair, tried it in the cabinet door.

It worked, and the door sprung open revealing a few folders stuffed with papers and to my surprise, a number of other items as well.

Taking them out, I immediately recognized the star shaped stone that Sanders had asked me to bring to him. It was a Mnar stone, an object believed by some to help in warding off danger. I struggled to recall what I’d heard about them from other members of the Miskatonic faculty, but all I could remember was that it had something to do with the Cthulhu myth cycle.

Pocketing the stone, I inspected a cast made of some kind of print that I soon associated with those of the deer outside the house. It struck me as strange why Sanders would bother producing such a thing, or storing it in the cabinet with papers dealing with his delusions. But seeing the print at closer range, it did strike me as somewhat strange and not like a deer’s at all.

In one of the folders I found a group of photographs, among them those showing the same kind of prints as they appeared in the ground behind the house. Turning the photo over, I saw that someone, most likely Sanders, had scribbled a note reading “Tracks found in the backyard: Mi-Go?”

Recalling what he had told me about alien creatures by the same name, I wondered if Sanders believed that the same beings had been congregating on his property? I smiled at the imagined scenario until I remembered that the same kinds of tracks were reported around the Pickerton hospital, and a vague feeling of discomfort suddenly came over me. Shaking it off, I continued to look through the photos coming across a group shot obviously of the Hughbanks Expedition with a young Sanders smiling in the back row. A few other photographs showed a number of ruins virtually hidden among thick jungle growth.

Immediately, the shape of the stone structures, whose size was only hinted at in the photos due to there being little in the jungle setting to compare them with, caught my attention. The culture of the ancient Mayan people was my field of special study, so my eye was trained to recognize the architectural styles they used over the centuries of their development and, though the structures in the photos had some familiar aspects, they were overall completely new to me, representing a heretofore undiscovered era of Mayan history.

Suddenly fascinated, I set the photos down and began going through the other material in the folders. I soon found some old receipts indicating that the jungle photos were copies made by the University of Pennsylvania and forwarded to Sanders’ home address. An invoice showed that Sanders had purchased the Mnar stone from a dealer in Boston a few months before his commitment to Pickerton.

A letter signed by the head of the antiquities department at the University noted that photos of the ruins arrived there by separate post while the Hughbanks Expedition was still in Belize, in fact, before the expedition had even left on its ill fated trip into the El Cacao region. As per Sanders’ request, copies were made of the photos and sent along to his home address.

Finally, I picked up pages filled with what I was sure was Sanders’ neat penmanship (looking about I noticed for the first time the lack of a computer anywhere about the room) and began to read.

They turned out to be an informal diary of sorts in which Sanders detailed the return of his memory…or his increasing paranoia, depending on whether or not I was to believe his hospital rantings. Nevertheless, I began to read and discovered that the photos had duly arrived at his home and placed in the desk cabinet by family members when they arrived. There they remained undisturbed for many years due to Sanders’ memory loss.

If I was to believe the story of his loss of memory, it apparently began to return to him a few years before. Not all at once, but gradually, as details of his participation in the Hughbanks Expedition grew more clear and the horror of it started to prey on his mind.