Shadows Out of Time

Professor Pierce shook her head. “It’s not. Something from another world visited what was the Gardner farm in the 1880s, and bad things happened afterwards. Contemporary accounts are quite clear about that. The reservoir may have diluted the problem over the past eighty or ninety years, but hasn’t dissolved it. Despite filtration, Arkham has high rates of insanity and birth defects. And the water in the reservoir is the likeliest cause. Believe me, I drink only bottled water from out of state. Sensible people here do.”

“My people say it’s safe,” Pmurt declared. “The state says it’s safe. I’m not afraid of it. I’d drink it straight out of the reservoir.” Yes, he trusted duly constituted authority.

Professor Pierce looked alarmed. “I wouldn’t do that. I really wouldn’t, not for anything. Even after a long lifetime and enormous dilution, it can’t possibly be safe. If you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything.”

“Everything will be fine. You watch and you’ll see. All these stories about the water, they’re nothing but”—Pmurt paused, casting about for a phrase, and found one in a Post story that had nothing to do with the human whose body he now inhabited—“nothing but fake news, that’s what they are.”

He called for his aide. “What do you need, sir?” the male asked, appearing as if out of nowhere.

“Bring me a big glass of water from the edge of the lake,” Pmurt said. “A big one, you hear?”

“Are you…sure that’s a good idea, sir?” the aide asked.

“Do what I pay you to do,” Pmurt replied. In every suitably complex society of which he knew, that was a potent argument. So it proved here. The aide fidgeted for a moment, but then went off to do what he was paid to do.

“Really, you don’t need to show off like this, not with unfiltered water from that…that unholy reservoir,” Professor Pierce said.

Pmurt laughed. What the Peaslee creature had written of the holy and the unholy struck him as particularly ridiculous. The aide came back with a large tumbler. He carried it carefully so the water wouldn’t slosh…or touch him. Pmurt took it from him. “Looks like water.” He sniffed. “Smells like water.” He raised it to his lips. “Tastes like water, too.” So it did; it was cool and refreshing. He drained the tumbler, then handed it back, empty, to the aide. He smiled what he somehow knew to be a mocking smile at the scholar from Miskatonic University. “You see? I didn’t blow up or anything. Fake news, like I told you.”

“‘The Ides of March are come.’ ‘Ay, Caesar, but not gone,’” Professor Pierce said.

“What the devil is that supposed to mean?” Pmurt demanded angrily. The Peaslee human had never quoted Shakespeare or written about the end of the Roman Republic. Neither had any of the other human spirits Pmurt had encountered. “Don’t talk nonsense,” he added.

“On your head be it,” the aging female human being said.

Pmurt was not used to having a head, even if sensory and manipulative organs had been concentrated near the apex of the conical body he’d formerly inhabited. “Are you going to complain any more?” he asked. “This hotel is legal. We’ve won all the court fights. You know we have. You’re just here to complain.” He wouldn’t have known any of that himself without the New York Post. Newspapers were a useful human invention.

Louise Pierce said, “I’d thought you might be politer and more sensible in person. Too much to hope for, obviously. Well, good luck with this place. I think you may need it, you and the out-of-staters who come to stay here. No one from within fifty miles of Arkham will want anything to do with your hotel. I promise you that.”

“Oh, yeah? What about the people who work here? They’re locals. We’re making jobs, is what we’re doing.” One more time, Pmurt relied on the Post’s coverage.

“If you see one of them drink from the tap or eat food that’s been made with reservoir water, I’ll be astonished,” Professor Pierce told him. She walked away without giving him a chance to reply. Among the Great Race, that would have been rude. Pmurt had no doubt it was among these human creatures, too.

As if to confirm as much, his aide said, “Sorry you had to go through that, sir.”

“Ah, never mind. She’s a sour, ugly old maid.” Pmurt inferred that Professor Pierce was unmated from her surname’s being the same as that of her ancestor. He had noticed that human females took males’ surnames on mating. Females were generally smaller and weaker than males; the name change had to be an acknowledgment of dependency.

“There may be more protesters at the opening ceremony this afternoon,” the aide said. “The police have promised that they won’t let them get close enough to annoy you.”

“They annoy me just by being here,” Pmurt snapped.

To his surprise, the aide smiled and even chuckled at that. “You sound like yourself, all right.”