Conference in the Stacks

CW: references to cult activity, marital infidelity, and monster violence

Candace Kinkade realized she had read and re-read the same page in her journal so many times that she’d lost count. Am I editing or memorizing? She thought, closing the journal and reaching for her phone, intending to text what remained of her family. Still no signal. She sighed and leaned back in her library chair, looking about the room, at the row of long tables surrounded by wooden armchairs worn shiny by decades of students and the rows of stacks that flanked them. Fitting for a room filled with books, she thought.

She grew aware of someone nearby shuffling books between two rows of shelves, followed by a harassed sigh and some soft cursing in German. She recognized the voice of Agent Matthews or Middleton, the professorish blond FBI agent handling the case which had her confined in this satellite library of Miskatonic University..

“Something wrong?” the rumbling voice of Matthews or Middleton’s much taller and more robust partner asked.

“Yes, they’ve nothing but the censored versions of the texts we need,” Matthews or Middleton replied.

“This gonna turn into one of your censorship rants?”

“No. I don’t have the mental bandwidth, not when I’m trying to find a way to summon a shoggoth.”

“A sentence that sounds normal coming out of your mouth. And I have a feeling you’re still in a mood over who we have to rescue. Normally you’d be chewing through the stacks like a beaver chewing through a log. You wanna talk about it?”

“You’re not my Bureau-appointed counselor.”

“No, but I’m used to counseling folk who need a compassionate ear.”

“I might be the size of one your teens, but I’m not one of them. Kincade is the last person I’d try and extract from any situation, let alone from a protoplasmic shapeshifter.”

Matthews or Middleton’s partner made a sympathetic noise. “I’ve read your file. Does this have something to do with what happened in Long Island in 2000?”

An uncomfortable silence ensued, then Matthews or Middleton sighed heavily. “Yes, damn your due diligence. This whole case has my mental filing system recalling some documents I’d rather not review.”

“You want off the case?” asked a third voice, belonging to the rookie agent who assisted them.

“No!” Matthews or Middleton snapped then sighed. “No, if there’s anyone who can handle this case, it’s me. I know what we’re dealing with.” A cough or a sob of a laugh, then he added, “He might come through the shoggoth to take another whack at me, to keep me silent about what happened at Rockridge.”

Rockridge. Candace’s husband, Clifton, had gone there on business retreats, invited by its owner, the eccentric business guru Vergil Mallegant. She hadn’t questioned it, as Clifton told her his visits helped him build up his network of business connections. And it gave him a chance to relax from the tension caused by managing his father’s oil empire and his interest in her father’s fish-packing company. But the trips came more frequently. Clifton returned home with unfamiliar perfume on his clothes and underwear she did not recognize in his luggage. The former she chalked up to the crush of a crowd of guests, while Clifton insisted a disgruntled woman had planted the latter in his suitcase after he had rejected her advances. He insisted that, as a good Christian man, he would honor their vows. Then about the time Clifton announced his run for the Presidency, the news broke of cult-like activity at Rockridge. Clifton had insisted none of that had happened, alleging that would-be rivals had perpetrated these fabrications to discredit Mallegant and him by extension.

She shivered, trying to shake off what had happened the day before, the creature emerging from the sea near her family’s beachfront estate, where Clifton had chosen to deliver his concession speech the day after his attempted re-election. Clifton shouting at it and making some strange gestures before it bore down on him and engulfed him.

The agents had continued talking among themselves. She forced herself to listen in and clear her head. “...It’s nothing like getting a scent trail. We can’t exactly have it sniff some of his unwashed laundry,” Matthews or Middleton said.

“Does it even have a nose or one that stays put?” the rookie asked.

“Wonder if it would respond to someone with similar genetics approaching it?” the robust agent asked.

“Let’s try and avoid dragging in any more civilians than are already involved. Bad enough we’ve had to lock off the beachfront property and have the Coast Guard try keeping the rubberneckers on boats away from it,” Mathews or Middleton said.

“Yeah, but what would be a better lure?” the rookie asked.

“Johnson, let’s shut it down,” the robust agent said.

She rose and stalked to the stacks, Roarke, her remaining Secret Service agent, following her a step or three behind. “Agents? Excuse me?”

The three agents – one built like a Roman gladiator; the rookie, Johnson, who looked like Central Casting’s idea of an FBI agent; and the short, slight, bespectacled Mathews or Middleton, holding a book with a worn cloth cover – looked up at her.

“Agents, a word?”

“Of course, madame,” Agent Matthews or Middleton said.

“Where’s the archetypal strict librarian with metal-rimmed glasses shushing us when she’s needed?” Agent Johnson teased.

“Shuttit,” Agent Matthews or Middleton said, his eye on Candace.

“I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. You could give me the grace of keeping me in the loop of what’s going on. I’m an adult, not a child. I can handle whatever you have to say.”

The three agents looked from her to each other. Matthews or Middleton’s gaze dropped slightly before he lifted his chin and met her gaze, before turning back to his colleagues. “She’s right.” He turned back to her. “You have every right to know, but the question remains, can you handle what this process may require.”

“If I can’t, you’ll know. But please, give it me straight.”

“How much have you heard?” the robust agent asked.

“I heard something about trying to bait those gelatinous things to get it to cough out my husband. Is that going to work?”

”As far as we know, one way to convince a shoggoth to cough out someone it has assimilated is to bring someone closely related by blood or close personal connection to them. But we’ll have to act fast and once it has coughed out the person, we’ll need to repel the thing so it doesn’t try to consume someone else. Or reabsorb the person just removed from it,” Matthews or Middleton replied. “But whomever a shoggoth reconstitutes won’t be the person they were.”

“Meaning?”

“That person might look like themself. They might sound like them, smell like them, have most of their skills and memories. Even their chromosomes look like theirs, but something’s off. They are themselves, but they aren’t themselves. If you run their DNA through an analyzer, it won’t look the same.

He might come back better, she thought. “As cliché as it sounds, that’s a risk we’ll have to take.

“I’m his wife. I’m bound to him by our vows and the sacrament. Would that connection work?”

“Not that he was good at keeping those vows,” Matthews or Middleton murmured, looking away.

Candace’s blood went cold and the headlines from four years ago came back. “Long Island Cult Masquerades as Fraternal Organization.” “Billionaire Orgy Cult Exposed.” “Local Teens Harmed in Sexual Rituals.” “Would his...sins affect this recovery?” she said, coolly.

“I apologize. I spoke out of turn. But considering that I...investigated Mallegant’s activities, I’m painfully aware of what went on behind closed doors.” His cold, pale blue eyes lost their hardness and went distant for a moment, starting to take on the aspects of a thousand yard stare. But he quickly resurfaced, his eyes softening with sympathy. “Mrs. Kincade, your offer is laudable, and it may work. But your husband’s… history of infidelity may have cost some of its effectiveness. At this stage in the exercise, I’d try anything that sounds reasonable, and even a few that cooler heads would consider unreasonable. But I think you know his actions, his squandering of your relationship, affected the probability of the desired outcome.” He drew in a breath. “I am sorry,” he said gently.

“Maybe it’s a probability we’ll have to risk.”

“Matherton, what’s the likelihood of success?” the robust agent said.

Agent Matherton kept his gaze on Candace’s face. She met his steely eyes, keeping her gaze and her resolve behind them as free from confrontation as she could. “I think we have a five to ten percent chance at best. But your resolve might tip it higher.”

Your resolve, she thought. He said that to me, not about me. “Not the best, but it’s greater than zero. It's enough for me.”