Doctorow går runt, runt, runt på kontoret. Svetten sipprar långsamt nerför pannan under brättet på den solblekta stråhatten, som sett sina bästa dagar. "Nej! Nej! NEJ!", utstöter han så med emfas, blickandes mot taket, där en trött fläkt långsamt viftar runt den närmast stillastående varma luften längs takfärgen som sedan länge börjat krackelera. "Värre än att skåda Dagon, käre Gud! Jag är kränkt djup in i min själ!" Doctorow går ryckigt över golvet, fäktandes uppgivet med armarna, och endast genom gudarnas försorg undgår den enda levande krukväxten på kontoret att knuffas i golvet, och fram till det oputsade fönstret. "Fan också, Lockwood! Det var ju din tur att hålla efter kontoret", muttrar Doctorow, och lirkar till sist upp handtaget till fönstret, som närmast fastkärvat långsamt öppnas, högljutt gnisslande i protest. Doctorow sticker ut huvudet genom fönstret, andas in djupt av den, jämfört med inomhus, friska luften och fyller lungorna, innan han i upphetsad falsett vrålar ut i gränden: "DEt hETeR LAbrAdOr ReTriEVer, OcH InTe ROveR!!!" Efter att ha fått rimlig kontroll över sitt farligt höga blodtryck igen, drar så Doctorow in huvudet till sist. Han går fram till den lilla städskrubben, där Frank Cannon allt som oftast sitter på en skurhink och sover med ena ögat öppet och sitt vapen i knät, och plockar fram städsaker till Lockwood, så att denne får ändan ur och tvättar fönstrena någongång. "Allt ska man behöva göra själv" kverulerar Doctorow närmast parodiskt uppgivet, då han sjunker ner i soffan med dagens Arkham Advertiser i ena näven, och en grogg i den andra....
The Epic Adventures of Alter, Baker, Jeremiah, Lake, MacNamara, and Pollack, Paranormal Investigators. Also including the strange events in New Mexico featuring Ashford, Cannon and McCloud, as well as the cases of Cannon, Doctorow & Lockwood, Private Investigators, and now including Antiques by Coleridge.
Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Monday, June 10, 2024
Dog Missing
It was
Friday, February 11, and Bill “The Hook” Lockwood was shivering on the worn
couch at Cannon, Doctorow and Lockwood, P.I. after his somnambulism. His whisky
bottle had been broken during the burglary yesterday, but it turned out that
both Cannon and Doctorow had whisky bottles stashed away in their desk drawers,
so Lockwood was grasping a well-fortified cup of coffee between his hands.
Bessie Coleridge was already on her way to the office to continue the strange
investigation, and the intrepid investigators were quite certain that the
curious and irredeemable Madame Tekla would show up shortly. However, when
there was a knock on the door it turned out to be a swarthy, tall and stocky
police officer. Doctorow greeted the uniformed gentleman cautiously, but Frank
Cannon leapt out of his chair and greeted the officer with a wide smile and a
firm handshake.
“Rick
Gallo! What the…what are you doing in Arkham?”
“We left
The City, you know. It is not a good place to work as you grow older, and you
know Corinne, my wife, her folks are from Kingsport, so we decided to move here
two months ago, and the Arkham P.D. had an opening. I only realized that you
were here the other evening when that other P.I., Moe Zuckermann, told me about
your agency. Anyway, I thought I’d surprise you. Hey, I see that liquor bottle.
Do I need to report this? Nah, just gimme a cup of joe.”
Cannon poured officer Gallo a steaming cup of coffee, and introduced him to Lockwood and Doctorow.
“Hey,
Frank, you remember when you worked in the city?” Officer Gallo’s New York
accent was way out of place in bucolic Arkham. “Youi used to work on some weird
cases, right? Like the Doll man homicides? And Rex the Paper Cutter?” Cannon
nodded quietly. There were still too many bad memories from New York.
“Yeah, so
whaddaboudit?”
“I saw
something really weird yesterday. Perhaps not by New York standards, but
still...”
“Ok?”
“I was out
patrolling my beat by the Miskatonic river, by the Old Port, when I heard a
really horrifying shriek somewhere by the Ecclestone pharmacy at around 8 p.m.”
Gallo took a sip of his coffee. “It was a girl. I didn’t recognize her, but she
might have been ten or twelve or so. Her winter coat was splashed with blood,
and the was holding a leash. Her dog walk had ended really badly, since the
head of a mutt was the only thing left on the leash. Below the neck there was
just a mass of tendons, some spine, and torn dog meat. It also seems as if the
torn parts were partially covered in some weird foam or ichor, orange to the
color and emitting a fetid stench. But then, that might only have been the contents
of the poor mutt’s digestive tract. Anyway, thoroughly disgusting.”
Some of the old warehouses by the Miskatonic River.
“I took the
girl to the station, and it turned out that she was recognized by one of my
colleagues as Annamaria Brady, who lives with her parents, John and Carrie, on 22
East Main Street, next to Christ Church. She had been out walking their Chocolate
Lab Rover, when the dog started sniffing something. It apparently then became
furious and tore the leash out of Annamaria’s hand. Annamaria ran after Rover,
and she was relieved to see Rover peeking out from the corner of a building a
few minutes later, but imagine her horror when she realized that the dog’s body
had been torn away.”
Cannon, Doctorow, and Lockwood were listening intently. Lockwood had stopped shivering, but he was still all bundled up. “We had her parents pick her up, and they were terrified as well. Poor people! Now, Frank, have you heard of anything like this happening in Arkham or elsewhere, or will this be labelled a car accident?"
That is when Bessie Coleridge and Madame Tekla stepped in to the office.
Saturday, June 1, 2024
Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
Felix Jeremiah, Frau Claire Bonhofer and Franz Alter had struggled for several weeks with the enigmatic third volume of the Pnakotic Manuscripts in the basement of the Neues Museum Library. This was the volume that dealt with what seemed to be no less of a matter than the creation of life itself! The old English text was quite difficult to penetrate, but the trio was up to the task. The contents themselves seemed to be more of a challenge, with vast plethora of bizarre and disturbing concepts stacked upon each other. All three of the impromptu researchers were looking increasingly harried, with Franz Alter in particular looking even more gaunt and haunting. Frau Bonhofer simply applying more harsh makeup, while Felex Jeremiah looked as if he actually might be a young teenager.
The frenzied work of the trio was disturbed a by an equally frenzied MacKenzie MacNamara, who had been cared for by Moira Baker and the other investigators for some time after being poisoned in her office. Well, the office of Professor von Kleist, but Mackie was getting quite comfortable in his spacious office while Professor von Kleist recuperated at the Gollingsdorf Sanatarium.
"Have you seen this?" Mackie was holding a newspaper in her raised left hand, while pointing at an article. "You guys are famous!"
Monday, May 13, 2024
A Message To You, Rudy
Sontag, Dezember 6, 1927. Hans-Joachim and Erich, still two small-time crooks, have joined forces at the Café Friedrich on a dreary Sunday afternoon to plan petty crime, and, more importantly, discuss some of the tumultuous events that had happened around Nollendorfplatz recently.
"It was early this Friday when an unlikely group of people stepped into Anton's workshop. There was this unnaturally tall man sporting a moustache and a bowler hat, a very strict-looking middle-aged woman in remarkably high heels, and a kid dressed as an adult. They were asking for trucks that had been in accidents, and of course everyone, and Anton in particular, knew about the bus that had been abandoned in the neighborhood, and subsequently dumped in the Landwehr Canal." Erich nodded and looked into hos almost empty beer glass.
Berlin Police interrogation of Greta Aschenbrenner, also known as Madame Lola.
So it seemed as if Mackie had been poisoned by some strange narcotic substance in her tea, and that somebody, perhaps Werner Haupt, the looker from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, had used this opportunity to access the restricted section of the library in the Neues Museum, and, according to a note on Mackie's desk, the dreaded Pnakotic manuscripts. It also seemed, according from what the Intrepid Investigators had found out while asking questions around Nollendorfplatz, that Werner Haupt might have been friendly with the notorious Doctor Koslowski, who had been expelled from the Berlin School of Medicine for brutal and unethical practices. It was said that he had hired a former abattoir somewhere around the Nollendorfplatz.
Back at the Neues Museum library, special librarian Heinrich Miller had taken Felix Jeremiah, Frau Claire Bonhofer, and Franz Alter to see the Pnakotic Manuscripts. It did indeed seem as if Werner Haupt had copied certain pages dealing with creating bizarre organisms, perhaps even early lore on molecules, currents and cell modification. This required further attention, and since the Pnakotic Manuscripts were written in medieval, but still English, Jeremiah, Alter and Bonhofer decided to achieve a deeper understanding of the strange and ungodly manuscripts. This would be a long couple of weeks, but it would give Mackie the chance to recover and to once and for all figure out how the grave robbings, the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, the Neues Museum, Proletkult, and all other entities were connected!
The volumes trace - and to an extent legitimize - certain Pharaonic dynasties to pre-human crinoids that seeded life on Earth. Two of the volumes deal with mythic pre-human civilizations, two, with some of the more obscure aspects of Egyptian history, including the debated Pharaoh Kih-Osk, while the third volume is thought to explain how to actually create life. Some researchers claim that this process is simply a joke or a parody, while others have suggested that some form of weird servitor race may be created.
Saturday, April 27, 2024
Who is Mr. E. Grant?
It was a particularly fine and sunny Thursday morning, not too early, when Bessie Coleridge was asked by Carrie Brown of Jules Pollack Fine Antiques to forward a note to Cannon, Doctorow and Lockwood, Arkham's premiere private investigators. Some claimed that they were Arkham's only private investigators, but that may not be entirely true. Bessie walked up the stairs to the office of the investigators and knocked on the door, just below the frosted glass pane that displayed the names of said investigators. She was greeted by a curt "come in" and the sight of three gentlemen enjoying a slow morning with coffee, cigarettes, and the Arkham Advertiser. The note was presented:
A case! Brad Doctorow didn't really seem too eager, but Carrie Brown was, after all, the prime buyer of Bessie Coleridge's acquisitions from all over the northeast. But what about the jewelry? It did seem to be not unlike the jewelry Bessie and her friends had found in the hold of that disturbing ship in Martin's Beach just a couple of weeks ago, the jewelry that was safely locked up in Bessie's Franz Jaeger safe?
To confuse matters further, one of the true characters of Arkham entered the office of the investigators: the legendary Madame Tekla, Arkham's favorite medium, and spiritist extraordinaire. "Fraud! Harold Biggs gave me a check that bounced!" Doctorow looked at the check. It was probably the worst forgery he'd ever seen, but Madame Tekla was upset and in distress, so Frank Cannon assured her that her 15 dollars would be reimbursed, one way or the other. Meanwhile, Bill "The Hook" Lookwood looked up from the morning edition of the Advertiser. "Hey, guys, did you see about the burglary at Miskatonic University?" Frank Cannon frowned. Anything going on at M.U. was destined to be weird or outright bizarre, despite Arkham being such a sleepy town.
Professor De Winter's office had indeed been broken in to, but nothing had been stolen, and neither had the finds from the archaeological digs outside Martin's Beach more than a year ago. The investigators had brought along the jewelry, and De Winter was most curious. But before presenting the diadem and the bracelet, Bessie secured the window, while Lockwood glanced outside the massive office door. He was greeted by a thoroughly disturbing sight: the man with the stovepipe hat, standing at the front doors of the Department of Anthropology a mere 50 feet away, just down the massive staircase that dominated the lobby of the department. Lockwood closed the to De Winter's office with a bang and pulled out his .45 Browning. All of a sudden poor Professor De Winter found himself surrounded by guns in every direction, but De Winter retained his composure. He cleared off his desk, and Cannon pulled out the jewelry. De Winter seemed stunned, and with a shaking hand he asked Madame Tekla to pull out volume III of "South Pacific: A Travelogue" by Robert Loveman, printed around 1822. And there it was: a drawing that bore more than a little resemblance to the pieces lying on De Winter's desk. "Jewelry from Ponape or Conakry found by Captain Marsh. According to legend associated with lost Mu or Lemuria". It seemed as if the sun dimmed for a second or two. De Winter leaned forward, whispering that according to vague rumors, possession of the Polynesian jewelry led to insanity, death, or worse!
Things were about to get even more complicated. The office of Cannon, Doctorow, and Lockwood had been broken into during the afternoon, and Lockwood's whisky bottle was smashed to pieces! The case was now personal! Even the sizeable Franz Jaeger safe had been broken into, but nothing was missing.
The investigators were troubled by strange dreams about watery depths and oceans that night, and it seemed as if Lockwood had walked out in his pajamas into the cold winter air. There were wet footprints leading up to Lockwood's bed, and young Joe Scacci, the bakery boy had seen Lockwood together with a man wearing a stovepipe hat. What was going on? What had happened to Bill Lockwood? "Well, he sure smells like Mr. Lockwood..." Madame Tekla's words were not reassuring.
Thursday, April 11, 2024
Cut to the Chase
"I'm telling you! It was Rosa Klebb and Janis Sarts! I saw them!" Mackie managed to spill out some of the contents of her brandy snifter, Frau Bonhofer frowned.
Monday, March 18, 2024
The Season of the Witch
Winter in New England. A perfect time to look for exciting antiques, or so Bessie Coleridge thought. People would be interested in getting some extra cash to spend in the spring, and most other antique dealers would be huddling in their stores. Bessie had reconnoitered Topsfield on the map, a location that had its brief moment of infamy some time ago, when a power plant exploded.
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TOPSFIELD POWER PLANT EXPLOSION
Monday, April 13, 1925
The Topsfield Power Plant was destroyed in a series of powerful explosions followed by a conflagration that left the Arkham Fire Department helpless to curb the flames. The cause of the explosions remains to be determined, but it has been noted that Dr. MacNamara, Ms. Baker, Mr. Lake, Mr. Pollack and Mr. Bowers, all of Arkham, are held by the Arkham Police for questioning, although some of these individuals were severely injured in the blast. Mr. Lake has also been charged with reckless driving. Neither the owner of the power plant, Mr. Otto Argo, nor the site manager, Mr. Bogislav Klimnik, have been available to comment.
Mayor Jonathan D. Bryce held a press conference this morning, and he stressed the serious nature of the explosion, and how Arkham has been plagued by a series of violent events over the last week or so. Mayoral candidate Dunstan Dunford accused Mayor Bryce of displaying "yet another example of his legendary ineptitude" in dealing with the current bout of violence, while Councilman Bedford Duvall pointed out that the destruction of the power plant will lead to a permanent power shortage in the Miskatonic Valley.
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Bessie Coleridge did manage to convince Frank Cannon, Bill Lockwood, and Brad Doctorow to come along with her, both for the sake of good company and to carry whatever antiquities that Bessie might lay her hands on. The fellow investigators drove off on Thursday, January 20, 1927, and they truly enjoyed the wintry wonderland, despite the snowy and trecherous New England roads. The village of Topsfield was actually located across the Miskatonic River from the ruined site that was supposed to have been finished as a modern power plant, and the village was quaint indeed.
The investigators checked in at the Topsfield Boarding House, which was more akin to a particularly nice bead and breakfast. The proprietor, Mr. Evan Sullivan, was a kind old man, and there was only one other boarder, a quiet and gruff prospector who mainly kept to himself (and yes, Doctorow could not resist breaking in to the prospector, and he a had a Geiger counter and many other strange items not seemingly related to prospecting, as well as potential connections to the government. Mystery unsolved). As the company of investigators settled in at the boarding house, Mr. Sullivan shared some horrible news regarding the disappearance of a young boy, William Lind, who possibly disppeared under the ice while exploring the abandoned saw mill by Rugby Lake, His mother, Erica Lind, was beyond herself, having lost her husband just two years ago, and Sheriff Joseph Miller in the nearby small town of Danvers had really not been of much help, stating that the ice had to melt before they could look for a body in earnest.
Monday, February 26, 2024
The Office
It was 3 AM in the morning of Friday, December 10, 1926. Frank Cannon was sitting by his desk in the office of Cannon, Doctorow & Lockwood, Private Investigators. The desk was covered by notebooks and sheafs of paper, most filled with notes in Frank Cannon's blocky handwriting. Several other items were more carefully laid out on a side table: the scroll that Cannon had taken from "Madame LaVerne", the weird psychic that was subsequently arrested for fraudulent behavior, the notebook of Eunice Saunders, the strange jewelry that Bill Lockwood had snatched from the hold of the S/S Ladylove, and a yet unopened bottle of whisky. Frank had been feverishly at work for more than six days, ever since the police intervention following the storming of the Ladylove by the enraged longshoremen. But even before then, Frank Cannon had left Martin's Beach in the middle of the night as he was struck by a moment of terrifying insight into the depths of the many weird situations he had found himself in over the course of the past three years.
Cannon had actually been inside the office for almost a fortnight, maniacally comparing the scroll with the notebook, and he was very much in need of a bath, a good meal, and a good night's sleep. But sleep had eluded him, and Frank Cannon had only dozed fitfully in a reclining chair for what felt like mere minutes. He muttered to himself about everything seemingly being connected as he filled in the lines of one of his weird graphs yet again. Then his head slowly slumped down on the desk. Frank Cannon was finally asleep.