Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous: Tim Marquitz (27 page)

If I feared the students, I quickly found I didn’t need to. My
classes were around a 60-40 mix of whites and blacks, most of the
whites being locals, but I found them to be, if not the smartest
tacks on the shelf, at least eager to be sharpened. Behavior-wise,
they were not nearly as bad as I first imagined them to be. At least
I did not have any incidents of them planning mass insurrections
within the classroom.

One student in particular interested me. Over the first few months, I
had noticed him remaining mostly sullen and withdrawn. It was enough
for me to be able to get the name of Robert Starling from his lips.
As for his attitude to me, unlike most of the other kids to whom race
did not seem to have as much of an influence on their behavior, he
seemed to be openly hostile, but openly hostile to everyone who tried
to get close.

As for race, that is what surprised me the most. Though I expected to
have a lot of racial tension within the class, outside of one or two
incidences the first few days of class, race seemed to not be a
factor at all. I found the locals were more than welcoming to the
newer arrivals, and though they were shy at first, the
out-of-towners
were quick to warm up to their new friends. When all outside bigoted
factors were removed, these kids were quick to tear down all walls
that divided the two.

The only person that I found any semblance of the bigoted attitude
was from Mr. Bishop himself. He took his job very seriously, roaming
the halls like a large vulture, leering down on any student
unfortunate enough to be out of the classroom. He also had the
tendency to mumble to himself when he thought nobody was near, and
usually what I heard were comments like, “What are these
degenerates up to?” “What is Chifford doing inviting all
these people here.” “Those degenerates are up to
something and I don’t like it.” He would also refer to
himself as the, “Only Undecayed left in Dunwich”

It wasn’t until early November that I started to notice
something unusual about my classes. Though the local student
population remained constant, the population of other students seemed
to fluctuate. As some would leave my class, either moved to other
classes, as I was told, or simply moved back out of Dunwich, others
would quickly move in to take their place. As I noticed this, the
first of the letters was placed in my box. It simply said, “Don’t
let the degenerates get to you.” Because of the use of the word
degenerates,
I had assumed it had come from Mr. Bishop, and I
told him in response that the students have been well behaved, and I
had been having no problems with them, at all.

It was at this time I finally made some headway with Robert. I had
noticed he was always writing in a separate notebook he carried with
him religiously, and I finally asked him after class one day what he
wrote.

While covering World War II, the question was raised why the
Holocaust was started in the first place. It was not an easy lesson
especially since many of the wounds were still fresh in everyone’s
minds.

“First of all, you must not think that everyone who was in
Germany at the time were fully to blame. Some did not know the
extermination camps were even there.” I explained.

“How could they not know?” came the question from one boy
who was really trying to understand. “You don’t just wake
up one day and ask where all the Jews went. Anyway, you told us
yourself about the various campaigns, and that film, the one where
they compared Jews to rats, accusing them of spreading diseases.”

“Yes, but many didn’t realize Hitler was taking that
step. They were being told about the
Jewish Conspiracy
and how
Jews were keeping them from the wealth and prosperity that they, as
Aryans, were entitled to. When the orders came that all Jews were
being moved to another city, where they can be with their own people,
there were no complaints. When people saw the empty house down the
street they said ‘Good, now they're gone where they can’t
corrupt our children.’ Or they didn’t think about them at
all. They’d say, ‘After all, what are they to us?’”

“You can’t believe anythin’ a white man tells you!”
came a shout from the back of the room. For the first time I could
remember, Robert had voluntarily said something in class.

“They tell you they need you to defend your country. They tell
yous Uncle Sam is needin’ you, then they sends you out there to
get killed! They tell you it’s an honor to die for yo country,
and we just lap it up. I won’t believe nothin’ no white
man tells me!”

I could tell this was upsetting him, but he needed to get it out.

“But both of them were white aren’t they?” another
voice asked in the front.

“Race has less to do with it than just the idea of
other
,”
I replied. “For some, all that is necessary is that it is us
against them. They were just happy to have someone to tell them they
were special, the chosen race, and give them an enemy to hate and
blame. They were being told Jews were inferior to true Germans. Their
brains were smaller and other nonsense like that. For those who knew
about the killings, it was that they either did not care about what
they were doing, or they believed the Jews were not even human to
begin with.”

“They just wanted to kill ’em, so they did. They don’t
care about nothin’ but themselves. Uncle Sam’s the same
way!” I could feel the pain within. “They ask my daddy to
serve his country, then ship him off to Vietnam to be shot to hell.
Oh, they say yo number’s been picked so you got to go, but I
don’t think they have as many numbers for white people as they
do for us niggas! Why don’t some rich guy’s son get shot
up for once instead o’ my ol’ man? I saw that army guy
tellin’ my mother that dad won’t be commin back. ‘We
are sorry for yo loss,’ they say but they aint! Marchin’
right back to their car, not turnin’ round while my mother’s
on the ground, and she hasn’t stopped cryin’ since. Yeah, she
can put on a face for all us but I know she’s still cryin’. I
hear her at night callin’ him and cryin’.”

I took him into my arms as he broke down and let him cry into my
shoulder. The outside world still had a long enough reach to find us
here, and my heart ached to finally know why he was so angry.

Two weeks after that, just before winter break, Robert left my class,
and I was determined to find out where he had gone.

The first person I asked was Mr. Bishop. His only response was, “The
Starlings have moved, and I do not know where they have moved to.”

This to me was odd, since I knew from my conversations with Mrs.
Starling this was her last chance, and there was nowhere else for her
to turn to. She would not have left.

For the rest of the teachers, Robert’s disappearance was
nothing to note. As his English teacher said, “What’s one
kid? They come and go. That’s one less kid to track.”
This incensed me to no end. I wanted to tell the ass what I thought
of his precious Dr. Samuel Johnson and where he could shove his
atrocious poetry.

During the last two weeks before we were scheduled for winter
holidays, I secretly pried into the school records. Though in a
deplorable state, they did show a pattern that disturbed me. In the
past two years the school had been in operation, over one thousand
students had left mid-semester, and no records of forwarding
transcripts were recorded. As I left, I found Mr. Bishop standing
behind me at the open doorway.

“Well, Missus Collins, what do we have here?”

This was exactly the situation I wanted to avoid. Here I was caught
with my hand in the cookie jar as you might say, and the one person I
least trusted stared me right in the face.

“I must admit, you were the first person to ever take such an
interest in where your students disappeared to. As for myself, I had
a feeling early on that you would be the one to do it. Don’t
worry, I’m not stopping you. There is little you can do about
it, anyway. Come January, it will all be over. I hope those
degenerates get what they deserve.”

With that, he walked out. As much as he had me dead to rights, he
simply walked out the door and left me speechless.

I did not bother to pack. I simply called Chifford from home,
explained my suspicions about the numerous disappearances that had
been happening in the past few years, and told him I would be driving
back to Arkham to look into where these people had gone. He urged me
to remain calm but I could not. Not when innocent people were
disappearing. Not when I did not know what happened to Robert and his
family.

On the way out of town, I stopped at ol’ Joe’s and asked
him a simple question. How many people did he see leaving Dunwich
this past year?

“Well,” he started to say with a sidelong glance. I could
tell he knew more than let on. “I’s seen many people come
into Dunwich, but not many that leave.”

Above, I could see large flocks of birds flying north toward the
lumber mill.

“Ah, the whippoorwills are back. It’s just about feedin’
time.”

While in Arkham, I reported what I had seen to the local police
department, who graciously explained to me there was nothing they
could do as Dunwich was simply not in their jurisdiction. At this
time, I then called the FBI and was informed they didn’t even
have a record of any town by the name of Dunwich.

With nowhere else to turn, and nobody willing to listen, I finally
went for advice from the one person who I felt might help and
returned to my contacts at Miskatonic University, and went first to
the one person who I knew had been to Dunwich, and might listen.

I found Doctor Kiska in his office. It was exactly as I remembered,
cluttered with papers. He listened patiently to what I had to say,
but as I explained more, his face grew pale.

“They’re still at it,” was all he said at first.

“Still at what?” I asked puzzled.

“You came to me because you remembered I had led an expedition
into the hills above Dunwich, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you never asked what brought me there in the first
place. I was there to investigate old ceremonial sites, ancient
Native American pyramids and stones, which dotted this area. At each
site, we found evidence of mass ritualistic slaughter, human
sacrifices similar to those of the ancient Aztecs. What was
problematic was that the site closest to Dunwich showed signs of
current use.”

Dread filled my face. This was beyond anything I would have imagined.

“Did you notice anything unusual around Dunwich as you left?
Specifically, did you notice any birds?”

“Yes. There were a group of them heading toward Dunwich as I
left.”

“Whippoorwills?”

“Yes.”

“Then we don’t have much time.”

“By the way, I never thanked you.”

“For what?”

“Recommending me.”

“Recommending you for what?”

“You didn’t send a recommendation for the job in
Dunwich?”

“I wouldn’t send my worst enemy to Dunwich.”

“Did you have a student by the name of Thomas Chifford the same
year I had you?”

“Chifford? Nope. Had a Thomas Whately.”

At the name I felt a cold chill and immediately rushed out the door
and to my car.

On my last drive into Dunwich, Doctor Kiska explained to me what he
had uncovered during his expedition fifty years earlier.

“Their beliefs were quite amazing. The Proto-Abenaki, as I
referred to them, believed that there were two worlds, that of the
spirit and of the flesh. One manifested in dreams and the intangible
soul, the other of flesh and blood. As all things live and die, their
life force returns to the spirit world to be then re-united with
flesh again and return to this world.”

“The Guff.”

“What?”

“You’re talking about the Guff. The hall of souls where
we wait to be reborn.”

“I didn’t take you for a Jew.”

“Messianic, actually. My family had its own unique form. My
grandfather talked about the hall of souls where all life originated,
all life returns, and all life springs from again. He used to believe
the Lark’s song was the harbinger of the soul calling new life
in from the Guff.”

“Interesting belief, exactly the opposite of the Whippoorwill,
but I’ll talk about that later on. As for these Proto-Abenaki,
they also believed in creatures from the world of spirits who feed
off of the souls of the living. Of what I can gather, there were two
branches of this religion, one who worshiped these creatures as gods
who would grant their disciples dominion over all, and a select few
who fervently believed these
gods
were demons who, if set
free, would destroy all life.”

As my face showed my incredulity, Kiska patiently went on.

“The reason I asked about the birds was that it was believed
the whippoorwills were the servants of these gods and would collect
the souls of the living as their mortal husks died. Just as your
grandfather’s lark brought new life into the world, the
whippoorwills stole life to be devoured by these creatures. It is an
amazing belief, if you ask me, but one shared by many cultures. From
Buddhism to Hinduism to even the abandoned religions of Egypt and
Mesopotamia, this belief in the spirit world and demons persists, as
does the belief in spirits and gods. They say where there is smoke
there is fire. I tend to agree.”

The sun was rising as we turned the last bend and entered the town of
Dunwich one final time. Far to the north a large cloud gathered over
the lumber mill.

“That is where we need to go.” Kiska pointed at the far
distant mill.

“How do you know?”

“That’s not a cloud,” he replied. “Those are
birds.”

As we approached the mill, a smell permeated the air.
It was pungent, similar to rotting meat. The sight that
greeted our eyes was one of absolute horror. Within the buildings
were mounds of bodies strewn about, while local workers were placing
them on hooks suspended from a conveyer pulley system bringing them
through to the next room. Above, the sound of thousands of birds could
be heard swirling in the early morn.