The Way You Came In May Not Be the Best Way Out

Chapter 5

“Can we stop by my apartment? I need to pack a bag. And my dog’s coming too.”

“Copacetic, Doug. The Gorski-Patchen expedition of 1934! What they should call it.”

Trying not to let myself think about what I was doing, I typed a resignation note, in which I told my boss editor what I thought of him—and stole the typewriter, a Hermes Featherweight that was eminently luggable. Stealing didn’t matter. I was leaving in a Duesenberg. And then—either I’d die, or I’d get rich. Everything would be fine.

I fell in love with Vivi Nordström at first sight. She cast some kind of Scandinavian spell. Said she was from Norway, and she had the accent and the long reddish-blonde hair, not to mention a tomboy attitude that laid me out flat. Sure she was sexy—but she was careless and forthright as a man. Didn’t give a damn what you thought of her. I’d never known exactly what kind of woman I was looking for. Now I knew.

Vivi was wearing pilot’s overalls of a moderne yellow and aqua design, with soft fleece inside. She had a silvery silk scarf with images of eyes, and triangular buttons on her cuffs.

“You’re scared?” she said, rolling her eyes toward me in a devastating up-from-under look. Tricky to manage, considering she was taller than me. We were in the hall of an Art Deco house she shared with Leon Bagger. He’d been at Harvard for five years, making slow progress in the groves of academe. She’d arrived last year to work with him. They were studying what was known of the odd creatures in Antarctica. This expedition plainly could constitute Leon’s ticket to the top.

“The plateau at the Mountains of Madness?” I said, by way of answering Vivi’s question. “The lost city of Leng. Intimidating. But I’m eager to hear your plan. Calm down, would you, Baxter?” The dog was furiously barking, while staring up the front hall staircase. An odd scent was wafting down, like ammonia and crabs and violets.

“That’s Urxula up there,” said Vivi. “Dogs and cuke people—a mixed match. It’s like pairing a knockabout scientist-aviatrix with a cub reporter, hmm?” She winked at me and laughed, showing a fine white set of teeth. I tried to judge how high or low I stood in her estimation.

“Come on already,” yelled Gorski. “Come look at Leon’s maps.”

“So you want to join our team?” said Leon Bagger as I entered the sitting room. He had a narrow head and a goatee. Sandy hair, an elegantly draped tweed suit, medium height. A zealous gleam in his eye, tempered by a courtly smile.

“Gorski here talked me into quitting my job,” I told Leon, not any too sure of myself. “I hope your plan is legit.” It was hard to believe I’d left the Globe. Why? Oh, right, so I could go to the South Pole and fight monsters with a bootlegger, a junior prof, and the woman of my dreams.

GlobeA cleanly designed elliptical table was at the center of the sitting room. Around the sides were streamlined chairs and couches, chromium with leather cushions in pastels. The ceiling was pale gray above off-white walls and bleached maple wainscoting. Spirals and sharps bedecked the rug. A spheroid-based tea set gleamed on the sideboard. To top it off, three sparsely elegant Mondrian paintings were on display, each of them easily the price of Gorski’s fancy car. Me, I’d grown up with six sibs in a bare tenement in Southie.

Noticing my expression, Leon shrugged. “It was only this fall that Vivi and I came into money. Diamonds from the deeps. Given to us by Urxula. She was grateful because we fetched her from the sea, fifty miles out, offshore from Innsmouth. Vivi had a vision of where to find her. I like to say that Vivi has a trace of Sami shaman heritage.”

“Don’t be so silly,,” said Vivi. “You know my heritage is no such thing.”

“I got some dough for the pickup too,” said Gorski. “I’m the one who borrowed the Coast Guard rescue plane one night to fly these two lovebirds out there to fetch Urxula.”

Baxter’s barking was increasingly savage and frantic. He kept starting up the stairs, then backing off with a volley of wild yelps. “Sorry about my dog,” I said again.

“The Pabodie party’s sled-dogs had the same reaction,” said Leon. “Can you calm him, Vivi?”

Vivi c****d her head and made a funny face—as if she were about to whistle or sing. But instead she growled, or hummed, or both at once. A curious sound—which captured Baxter’s full attention. Bashfully, inquisitively, he nosed into the sitting room, then sat at Vivi’s feet.

“Urxula is your friend,” Vivi crooned to the dog, leaning down ever so gracefully—like a willow, like a naiad, like the silver sprite on the hood of a Rolls-Royce. She unleashed a final burst of musical droning, and Baxter wet the rug.

“Vivi has that effect on her captives,” said Leon Bagger with an indulgent laugh. “Abject surrender. We’ll clean it up later.”

“Urxula can do it,” said Vivi. “I’ll call her down. She wants to meet Doug.” Vivi tilted back her head and made another sound, a haunting, aeolian whistle—like a high wind across the mouth of a cave.

Now came a bumping and slithering on the stairs. By this point I had a pretty good idea of what Urxula was. But actually meeting her was something else.

Undulant and supple, she slithered into the room prone, then tootled a greeting, and rocked onto her bottom end, standing a foot taller than me. Baxter lunged at her, meaning to bite. With a swift movement of one branching arm, Urxula caught hold of the dog and muzzled his snout. The alien creature was what people called a cuke, except people from Arkham, who called them Elder Ones. Urxula was just as the Pabodie and Starkweather-Moore reports had described.