Free Whispers From The Abyss by Kat Rocha (Editor)

happens to folk like me in small towns.  This would normally be where I’d call my attorney, but he was somewhere in South America leading a revolution.  I did the next best thing and tapped an old friend with a bit of muscle that owed me big.  Rooster Brown and I once fought the modern incarnation of Dracula together.  Yeah, I’m not entirely certain that it actually happened either.  We investigated the Rolling Stone lead into the city of Arkham, but eventually dead-ended at the infamous Arkham Asylum.
    It took three days, a few bribes, and an unsubtle threat from Rooster to get formal permission to see our contact.  A squat orderly named Akeley led us down to the asylum’s basement where they kept the most violent of their residents.  He had thick jowls, bulbous eyes, and a suspiciously Nixon-like jump nose.  I made certain that he was always two steps ahead of me and always in my line of sight.   
    We heard screams that would have set a crazed ether fiend on edge.  Rooster and I flinched, but the orderly simply shrugged.  What sort of bastard doesn’t flinch at the sound of a scream?  I didn’t know what those bastards had done to be locked away, but I was suddenly quite happy that I was on this side of those cool concrete walls.
    Akeley stopped at the end of the hall in front of a large metal door with a monstrous antique lock.  He fumbled through a giant ring of rusted keys until he found the right one and jammed it into the ancient lock and turned it.  The metal door opened with a loud whine revealing a room that stank of piss, sweat, and desperation.  Sadly it was not an entirely unfamiliar scent.  There was no bed, but the entire surface of the room was covered with a padded surface, likely to prevent the poor bastard from bashing his head into the wall. 
    “Only one visitor at a time,” the orderly barked.
    Rooster shrugged like Atlas.  I wanted to punch Ayn Rand in the ovaries.  “I think this is your trip, Doc.”
    I swallowed uncomfortably.  I didn’t like the idea of being in the room alone, but Rooster was right.  This was my gig and I knew if nothing else that my friend would be able to get me out of any potential trouble.  “Remember, I’m not a permanent resident here.  Not yet anyway.”
    “Don’t get too close,” Akeley warned with a savage cackle.  “Marsh bites when he gets too agitated.”
    I stepped into the oubliette of form and paddling and shivered as the door locked behind me.  Would Rooster forget about me as the world had forgotten Josh Marsh?  The room was dark with rays of light filtering through the slits in the metal door.  “Are you there, Josh?  It’s me, Hunter.”
    Marsh had been a regular contact and occasional dealer of delights of mine for years.  He sold a unique form of acid allegedly derived from a rare fungus that could only be harvested near the ocean floor and was quite difficult to reach.  I had more than once bought some of his supply. 
    Something in the shape of a man skittered in the darkness.  I immediately reached for the door absolutely certain that bastard Akeley put me in here to die.  “Hunter?  Is that really you?  I can’t be certain.  I hear so many voices now.” 
    A shallow, jaundiced familiar face emerged into the light; a dissolving echo of a friend that had seen better days.  It had been only a year since I had last seen Marsh in Fresno, but the visage before me appeared at least twenty years older with yellowed skin, deep lines and wrinkles, and thin spots where a luscious head of hair had once been.  Marsh had been a handsome, gregarious man always surrounded by lots of pretty girls.  “Josh!  What are you doing here?  What happened?”
    He blinked.  It was almost a human gesture.  “The Waites put me in here.  I had second thoughts about the resurrection.”  His eyes were wide and terrible like a man that had completely surrendered to the beast and nothing could ever return him.  “They