In my dream there is a big black goat standing on a rotten cypress stump. The goat's giant rough horns curl around the side of its head, and its black eyes stare deep into my face. It belches a long, deep bleat that causes me to jump awake with the memory of a fading riddle, from a place between ever and never.
I'd fallen asleep in my old office chair with my fingers laced across my chest. The lights were off and my worn boots were propped on the corner of my antique wooden desk. All was silent as a church on the third floor of The Claiborne Herald.
As the newspaper's lone nightshift reporter, I was tasked with holding down the fort. As long as I churned out three decent stories a week and kept one ear on the police scanner, nothing else was required. Fact was, I loved the job that no one else wanted.
Not moving a muscle, I listened intently, but heard nothing out of the ordinary. My desk clock said in red numbers that it was 3:19 in the morning. The newsroom's morning shift wouldn't trickle in until eight o'clock.
Not for the first time, I wondered if the office was haunted. Much of the building was antebellum old and no doubt housed an apparition or two. I sat up, and the chair's mainspring creaked loudly.
I opened the top drawer of my desk, reached inside and pulled out a small plastic bottle of caffeine pills. I screwed off the childproof cap and shook the last two pills into the palm of my shadowed hand. Without water, I popped the pills into my mouth and sat in the darkness, letting them dissolve bitterly under my tongue.
This was a habit I'd picked up in the Army. Late night sentry duty led many soldiers to procure caffeine pills from the well-stocked supply at the post exchange. It was quicker than drinking black coffee.
I snapped on my green-shaded desk lamp, and it cast its yellow light on a map of Arkham, a city in Massachusetts about 1,400 road miles from Old Claiborne. The map had been mailed to me in a sealed envelope that included a dog-eared paperback copy of "Nameless Cults" by Von Juntz. One of The Herald's readers - who went by the moniker of Indrid Cold - included a short note saying that he'd found coded references in the book.
I get weird stuff like this in the mail all the time, and you never know what to take seriously. Mr. Cold said that the paperback contained hidden references to Claiborne residents who fled the river city during the witch trials of the 1840s. These ciphered names matched the names of old Arkham streets that converge on the city's central cemetery.
As I pondered the meaning of this, I heard the rumble of thunder in the distance. A few seconds later, a low moan sounded from overhead as the wind blew across the open mouth of an iron rain spout. Another peal of thunder, closer this time, let loose as raindrops began to tap against the window, soft at first before erupting into an outright downpour.
I rose from my chair, stood at the window and watched it rain. Long tendrils of Spanish moss, hanging from the large oaks across Legrasse Street, swayed in the wind. For what seemed like a long time, I watched a rain-drenched homeless man push a metal grocery buggy down the sidewalk, changing his tack only once when a stray black cat darted across his path.
The cat disappeared into a shadowed alley, and the man paused under a street lamp to watch. The man's hooded jacket hid most of his face, all except for what looked like a long grey beard. Rain poured down on the man, and I watched for many long seconds until I realized the man was staring up at me.
Suddenly and without warning, white blinding light cast everything into negative as a bolt of lightning hit one of the massive live oaks in the square across the street. An instant later, sparks showered from an electrical transformer sitting atop a utility pole a short distance away. I recovered my senses a few seconds later only to realize that the homeless man had disappeared.
I froze, locked in place, as the sound of something in the darkness behind me reached my ears. It was the sound of loud breathing coming from the brown leather chair in an opposite corner of the room. In one smooth motion, I spun, grabbed for the holstered Beretta on top of my desk and raised my arm to fire when I froze in place, stunned by the shocking sight that met my eyes.
There in the darkness, perched on the leather chair and illuminated by the faint light of my desk lamp, was a large, black goat. The beast sat perfectly still except for its flaring nostrils, its only challenge to the raised gun. The creature's black eyes, shiny like those of a spider, flashed as my finger tightened on the handgun's trigger.
In the next instant, the animal's barnyard smell reached my nostrils, damp hay with a hint of warm manure. And there was a faint hint of something else, a mix of brimstone and rancid ash that conjured up thoughts of a pot-bellied stove tended by the devil. I sensed that I was in the same room with the Lord of the Flies.
In the light of the desk lamp, I saw leaves and bits of straw tangled in the goat's thick black coat. I imagined running my fingers through that matted mess of hair, my hand coming away damp and slick as if I'd picked up a dead rat from a fast-food grease trap. I eased off the trigger when I realized that this skull-faced goat was the black goat from my nightmare.
The goat shifted its weight in the chair, causing the Victorian leather to squawk under its nasty cloven hooves. One of the beast's horns snagged on a framed picture of my father and grandfather hanging on the wall behind the chair. I heard glass crack a moment before the picture came crashing to the hardwood floor with a bang. The goat let loose with an unnerving bleat that sent a chill raking down my spine like skeletal fingers on a chalkboard.
The rain fell harder outside, hitting the window behind me with the force of a hurricane. Another flash of lightning filled the room with white light, blinding me for a second as my eyes adjusted to the painful glare. Reflexively I raise the handgun in the direction of the goat and when I sighted down along the length of the barrel, I realized the goat was gone.
Motion to my left caught my eye, and I spun to see the office door swing open slowly. I dashed around the desk, bumping my left hip hard as I rounded the corner. I raised my gun and looked out into the empty newsroom. Not a creature was stirring, not sign of the spectral goat.
Something at my feet caught my eye. I stepped back and saw an old yellowed envelope. I stooped to pick it up. In cragged script, scrawled across the front, were the words "For Eli McMorn."
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