Byron Craft [Craft - The Devil Came to Arkham

THE DEVIL CAME TO ARKHAM

Book 3 in The Arkham Detective Series

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.
Copyright 2017, United States Library of Congress; The Devil Came to Arkham

www.ByronCraftBooks.com

Artwork by Eric Lofgren; www.ericlofgren.net

ISBN-13: 978-1976246654

ISBN-10: 1976246652

DEDICATION

To my sidekick, companion, and better-half, Marcia
who has put up with me for over thirty years.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The Devil
Came to Arkham

Can anything good come from Arkham? Most doubt it. Arkham Massachusetts, in character, is neither virtuous nor depraved; it aspires to be Providence, but it comes closer to Salem when Corvus Astaroth is added. It is the Arkham Cycle. It not only attracts the lowest of all things living or dead, it is also a magnet for the strangest. Some cities grew while Arkham just festered. Maybe Arkham's aberrant culture was the ultimate power source for him. You know the saying: In the long run, were all dead." Well, when it comes to Corvus Astaroth, sometimes evil is hard to kill.

I first met him while I was standing on the bottom step to Station House 13 smoking my fifteenth Lucky of the day. I was thinking about this and that; just looking at the asphalt between me and my problems, when he pulled up. There was this weird fella driving a beat-up Model T. The old Ford was bright red and looked like it was painted with a wet mop. The driver was clean shaven, with bushy white eyebrows wearing a sailor straw hat. Who the hell wears a hat like that nowadays? I asked myself. The back seat of the Model T was piled high with an array of heavily worn furniture and bulging canvas sacks. Long black candelabras hung halfway out the windows. Strapped to the top of the trunk were ominous looking wood crates. For a brief instant, I thought I detected movement in one of the sacks.

The drivers side door swung open and the shortest pair of legs I ever saw pivoted sideways and dangled over the running boards. He jumped down and stretched to his full height not quite making it to five-feet. He was also beyond plump. He had a girth on him that resembled the Hindenburg. The fat little fella strutted towards me with a swagger, extended his right hand and announced, Hi, my name is Corvus Astaroth, friends call me Ash."

I took the little guys hand, pumped it a couple of times and replied, Hello Mr. Astaroth, what do you need with the Arkham Police Department?

Police! he said jumping at the sound of the word. I thought this was the City Hall.

Two blocks down, on the right.

Oh my, he answered. I am truly sorry. I just arrived. I have decided to take up residence in your lovely town. I want to file for residency and enquire about any homes for sale in the area.

I dont do real estate. Two blocks down, on the right. I ground the Lucky out on the pavement and turned to walk up the steps.

He raised his voice to a high pitch and called after me, I am so sorry again. I didnt catch your name?

Detective, I answered back as the door to Station House 13 slowly closed behind me.

***

That was three months ago. A lot has changed in Arkham. From my third storey apartment window, I could barely make out the clock tower at Miskatonic University. Closer was the Church Street Park. Three or four years ago it looked like acres of spinach when viewed from up high; a place of bridle paths, a lake and at one time a zoo. There used to be a quaint bridge spanning a narrow outlet over the water with happy children sailing model boats. After the stock market had crashed, the city turned off the water and stopped maintaining the place. The Great Depression left little money in the city coffers for up-keep. Now it is desolate with brown grass, a mud hole where the lake used to be, crumbling bushes and dead trees. It has also become a home for muggings and rapes. I always wondered what happened to the zoo animals.

These days crime has escalated to the highest in the towns history. There is the Devil's Playground, a foul slum and brothel district north of Arkham Commons, most of which was now owned by Corvus Astaroth, hence the name some say. By rough estimates, as many as a hundred prostitutes plied their trade there. If there was trouble after dark in Arkham, it was nearly always in the Devil's Playground.

The disfigured body of a cop was found concealed in one of the bordellos. The victim was twisted all up resembling a gross parody of a contortionist; every bone in his body had been crushed. A violent retaliation by a number of uniformed officers occurred the next evening. They went on a rampage, tearing to pieces the saloon where the murder had taken place. Some days later, the remains of a past her prime floozy was discovered ditched in a privy, so long dead that she was disintegrating.

Months after Astaroth rolled into Arkham the cool breezes of spring were gradually replaced with a searing heat wave. Maybe it wasn't him, but it had seemed to happen following his arrival. I didnt want to think about the implications, but I couldn't help it. It wasnt that it was just hotter than usual; it had killed the crops within the surrounding farms and almost depleted the town reservoir. Arkham had been through many a year with the heat, but not at this time of the year and for so damn long. Now it was considered an adversary that simply came to visit and overstayed its disagreeable sojourn.

Murder runs rampant when it becomes hot. More people are snuffed-out at ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit than any other temperature. At lower temperatures, people are easy-going, but at ninety-two, they just get irritable. Currently, the thermometer looked as if it was stuck at one-hundred degrees, and that is in the shade, which only makes matters worse.

Then there was that dark thing that Willie Mack and Enoch Wells shot one night, which they never wanted to talk about. They had been hunting in the woods south of the Christ Church Cemetery. All I could get out of them was that it took three rounds, in the torso, from a .30-30 Winchester and, "it walked off as if nothin' happened." After that, they clammed up. Either they thought that people in town would think them crazy or drunk or, then again, maybe they were afraid of retaliation by someone or something they didn't want to get chummy with.

Mr. Astaroth had risen to prominence within Arkham in a very short time. He came here without a plug nickel to his name, and within a few months owned one of the biggest houses in town, was chauffeured in a fancy set of wheels and was now considering a run for mayor. Epiphanies don't come naturally to me, but when I do have one, I usually get a wrenching in the pit of my stomach. That could, of course, be caused by a combination of chili dogs and black coffee, nevertheless, not including an overdose of excessive consumption, I was sure that everything was going to happen for the worst and that spelled; Corvus Astaroth, friends call me Ash. Deep down inside, I believed that I was going to be tasked with being the Bromo-Seltzer.

That was when the telephone jingled. It was Sunday, and I wanted to let it ring off the hook, but my cop-sense told me to answer. Go ahead, its your nickel, I said after picking up the receiver.