Cult of the Spider Queen, page 1
part #6 of Arkham Horror Series
Arkham Horror
It is the height of the Roaring Twenties – a fresh enthusiasm for the arts, science, and exploration of the past have opened doors to a wider world, and beyond…
And yet, a dark shadow grows over the town of Arkham. Alien entities known as Ancient Ones lurk in the emptiness beyond space and time, writhing at the thresholds between worlds.
Occult rituals must be stopped and alien creatures destroyed before the Ancient Ones make our world their ruined dominion.
Only a handful of brave souls with inquisitive minds and the will to act stand against the horrors threatening to tear this world apart.
Will they prevail?
First published by Aconyte Books in 2021
ISBN 978 1 83908 082 1
Ebook ISBN 978 1 83908 083 8
Copyright © 2021 Fantasy Flight Games
All rights reserved. Aconyte and the Aconyte icon are registered trademarks of Asmodee Group SA. Arkham Horror and the FFG logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Fantasy Flight Games.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover art by Daniel Strange
Distributed in North America by Simon & Schuster Inc, New York, USA
ACONYTE BOOKS
An imprint of Asmodee Entertainment Ltd
Mercury House, Shipstones Business Centre
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1927
1
Attention Andy
The package was not for him. Andy never got any mail at the paper. He did not rank high enough among the reporters, and he never would, not with the kind of stories they were assigning him. He was bored and wandering down in the mailroom one sleepy, dreary Monday morning, a cup of hot coffee in his hand, lamenting this fact when he spotted a curious parcel on the mailroom’s sorting table. The size itself was not remarkable. Round, flat like a box of candy. What caught his eye, besides the well-traveled look of the wrapper – khaki, rain-spotted, frayed at the edges, and tied with a dark, mildewed string – was the abundance of red stamps and the postmark.
From somewhere in Brazil? Is that what it said?
He leaned forward and rotated the box to read it better.
Heck, he was right.
Manaus, Amazonas, Brasil.
No name or street mentioned in the return address. The Advertiser’s address was general too, without any further direction to pass it along to a specific editor or reporter.
Just the word: ATTENTION!
And scrawled underneath that: PLEASE OPEN IMMEDIATELY! URGENT!
Hmm… that was interesting. Who in the Amazon jungle would be shipping mail to the Arkham Advertiser in chilly, old, gloom-capped New England, USA? He lifted the edge of it. Heavy. A cardboard box of sweets was out of the question. More like a tin case of something.
But what?
He was tempted to give it a good shake. Then he might have an idea…
“May I help you, young man?” The mailroom manager was a middle-aged gent with a sharp moustache and a bowtie that looked like a strangler tied it. His eyes bulged.
Andy startled, nearly spilling his coffee. The cub reporter had been staring so hard at the package he hadn’t noticed the other man approaching. They stood on opposite sides of the cluttered table. The man looked at him frostily.
“Hi, I’m Andy Van Nortwick. I work upstairs.”
No reply.
He’d been an employee of the paper for almost a year. A lot longer if you counted his time as a paperboy, biking up and down Arkham’s early morning streets. Home delivery was catching on then. He tossed his bundles on porches and stoops, testing out his shortstop’s arm.
“I bet you’ve seen me around, haven’t you?” Andy tried again.
“No.”
Andy glanced down, disappointed. “I’m working on blending in so I can observe others. That’s what an ace reporter does. Never get in the way of the big story. I must be good at it.”
“You could do better,” the manager said. His eyes narrowed to slits.
Andy was about to excuse himself when a crazy idea charged into his head.
“Say, I was wondering. Long as I’m down here, do you have anything for me to carry upstairs? Save you a trip later.” Andy smiled. His thumb plucked the package string. He hoped he wasn’t being too obvious. But he had a sudden urge to know what was in the box.
He needed to know.
“I haven’t finished sorting.” The manager’s attitude warmed. “Mondays are bad. The Saturday crew is an utter disaster. What’s on the table are their leftovers. Who knows what they do besides devising ways to add to my list of chores? Today’s mail hasn’t even come yet.”
The bell over the door rang. A uniformed man shouldering a satchel pushed inside.
“Speak of the devil. Be with you right away, Ed.” The bow-tied manager turned toward the counter facing the Armitage Street public entrance of the Advertiser building. “‘Neither rain nor sleet nor gloom of night’, as they say. Did you know that line comes from Herodotus?”
“That old Greek must’ve had a postman’s heart,” Ed said. His cap dripped rain, and his wool uniform smelled musty. A gust of November wind rustled papers in the mailroom.
Andy shivered. Boy, he was not ready for another long cold winter stuck indoors.
He had a hunch about the Brazilian package. A quiver in his gut told him there was a hot story inside. Damned if he was going to let it go to waste. Or worse, watch it passed along to one of the hacks from upstairs, sneaking slugs of whiskey from their desk drawer bottles, chomping on putrid cigars, and treating him like a nobody.
As the other two men moved off to the other side of the mailroom, Andy snatched the pencil from behind his ear. Without a moment’s hesitation, because if he thought about it too much he’d lose his nerve, he bent over the package and jotted a quick addition to the address.
So now it read: ATTENTION! ANDY VAN NORTWICK, JOURNALIST!
That’s more like it, he thought.
One little worry, though.
His note didn’t match up with the rest of the message, which was written in ink. But the ink was faded as if it sat roasting on a tropical dock before being tossed into the leaky cargo hold of a northward-bound freighter for a weeks-long journey trod upon by rats. Andy dipped his finger in the dregs of his coffee and smeared a drop across his name. Far from perfect. But the letters darkened. Close enough to still get noticed but not too much to cause any suspicion. He shoved the package between two piles of envelopes.
And went upstairs to wait for his big break to arrive.
2
Something More Than Curiosity
Andy shared a desk with the Advertiser’s best-known sportswriter. Sean “Red” Phelan had another desk among his athletically minded cronies, where they jawed about baseball, horseracing, and boxers. The desk Red shared with Andy was where he went to get away from the boys. That meant Andy had to find somewhere else to scram to whenever Red needed to meet a deadline or grab shuteye after a night out. Their desk tucked conveniently behind a pillar.
Right now, though, Andy had it to himself.
He tipped back in his chair and daydreamed.
The Amazon…
If that place didn’t spell adventure, nowhere did. Andy loved the idea of jungles. Challenging yourself to survive on the knife edge between life and death in a truly wild place. Dropped into the middle of miles of impenetrable green, indistinguishable from the elemental world of the dinosaurs. A person moved forward according to their skills. And what they knew mattered more than who. Nature’s awesome indifference set the only rules. You weren’t subject to human whims or favoritism. He’d trade it for this stuffy office with its smoke-blue haze and backroom politics. No birdsong here but clacking typewriters.
The only river made of talk and more talk.
As a student, Andy had found escape in adventure stories. Schoolwork bored him, but he was always a reader. Haggard, Doyle, Kipling, and Burroughs. He dived into their fantasies. Ultimately, they weren’t enough. He suspected it was because they wrote fiction. None of it was real. Paeans to empire: that quality was evident. The authors championed examples of colonial violence and ugly cultural injustices under the banner of Western progress. Elitist white men trumpeting their dominance of the globe. At what cost?
Andy was no John Reed radical. With President Coolidge deciding not to run for re-election, he didn’t know who he’d vote for next year. Lots of people around Arkham, mostly the rich ones, hoped the b
No mail cart.
His mysterious package from Manaus was stuck in transit.
He could barely keep from scouting the hallways. But he had to stay calm. Not act suspiciously. What he’d done was ethically questionable at best.
At worst…
He didn’t let himself think about it. Andy wanted to make a name for himself. The Advertiser’s editor, Doyle Jeffries, ran a tight operation and didn’t put up with rule-bending. Not from his news department. He was a muckraker through and through, a stickler for hard evidence and high standards. But it wasn’t easy breaking into the circle of investigative reporters. Issue after issue, the same people got their bylines on the front page. Heck, Andy would admit he was jealous. Sure he was! He wanted in. For the longest time he was convinced Jeffries didn’t even know his name. He went as far as to bet fellow reporter Minnie Klein a slice of cherry pie at Velma’s that she couldn’t get Jeffries to identify him after a meeting. Minnie paid for the pie.
The one time he had gotten Jeffries’ undivided attention had ended in total disaster. Andy was lucky to still have a job. He shouldn’t be risking blowing up his livelihood over a box he couldn’t even guess the contents of. If somebody found out he doctored the address…?
Jeffries wouldn’t take him back. Not the way he did seasoned staff like Rex Murphy who, despite a few major foul-ups, had the editor’s respect. Andy needed to earn his way up the ladder to reach the level of a Minnie or Rex.
How could he do that with the scraps they were feeding him?
News didn’t even really sell papers. Flashy sports writers like Red Phelan did. Andy wasn’t about to catch any lucky breaks from the sidelines. He could feel his opportunities slipping away each week. If he didn’t grab something soon…
A person had to seize their future.
He’d learned that.
What he planned to do was open the package. Carefully. Give it a good inspection. See if there was anything newsworthy. Perhaps a rumble of international intrigue that sent waves all the way to the banks of the Miskatonic. Andy had a feeling the package held something important. He knew how cliched that sounded. A reporter’s hunch. It went beyond journalistic instinct. He felt an almost eerie connection. That box held his destiny. He just knew it.
If he ultimately decided to pass, he’d put everything back. Say it came to him by mistake.
He put his feet up and flipped through his assignment notebook.
Sigh.
This week they wanted him to spill ink about the revised bus schedule to Innsmouth. A museum exhibition. Church bake sales. A burst pipe that flooded a warehouse on River Street.
Andy chucked his notebook.
Bus schedules and bake sales… leaky pipes…
How could he be expected to move up?
That box, though. That little brown box…
A headache pulsed in his temples. In the dark behind his eyes, he saw the box shifting. Imagined it coming to him. Floating.
Why was something unknown suddenly so important to him?
Is this how obsessions started? A drip, drip, drip that slowly filled your brain until there was no room for anything else. The pressure in his head grew.
The box.
The person who mailed it from Manaus obviously didn’t know him. To them Andy didn’t exist. To Andy they hadn’t existed until this morning in the mailroom when something more than curiosity told him what to do. Write down your name, Andy. Make it yours. Steal it if you must.
Now he was able to picture them in a foggy way.
The humid air. The smell of water, mud. Two tanned hands tying the string. Bustle in the port. Noises of life. Voices. Speaking in one or more languages he didn’t understand.
A rattle of coins and a pile of wrinkled bills sliding across a counter.
Licking the stamps, pressing them down on the paper.
He saw it.
Andy knew that sounded even more far-fetched.
But after this past summer and what he’d witnessed at the Silver Gate Hotel he wasn’t discounting anything. Certainly not the possibility of anything… uncanny.
Andy had gone to the hotel to interview a famous artist. A painter of the Surrealist movement named Alden Oakes. The hotel had burned a year earlier, and Oakes was a survivor of the horrific, deadly fire. Back in town for the Silver Gate’s grand reopening. The story he told Andy over the next few hours was… peculiar. Riveting but strange. Andy wasn’t sure how much to believe. But he’d unexpectedly gotten what he thought was a really good story out of it. A hot story – he wondered if he should risk the pun when he pitched it to Jeffries. If the editor in chief gave him the go-ahead, it would be the biggest piece he’d written for the Advertiser. They couldn’t ignore him then.
Only that wasn’t the end.
Andy was the last person to see Alden Oakes. Ever.
The man went missing after the interview. Vanished. Andy saw something that day in the hotel ballroom when he and the painter were alone. Or Andy thought they were alone. What he observed brought up more questions than answers. It was almost like Andy stepped into another man’s dream. Or nightmare. Depending on how you interpreted things. And Andy wasn’t sure. He’d changed his mind a thousand times in the past few months. The longer it receded into the past, the less certain he was. Not of the facts, but of his own perception. He wished he had another person he could check things with, a second eyewitness. Someone to validate his memories. He knew what he saw. Afterward his mind was opened to… other possibilities. This much he was convinced was true: supernatural phenomena do occur. Unexplained events have explanations. Some people just aren’t ready to hear them.
One of those people was Andy’s editor.
Doyle Jeffries.
Andy ran to the Advertiser’s offices that day, after a quick search of the painter’s hotel room. He demanded to see Jeffries. The editor sat there staring while Andy ran through his tale, leaving nothing out. After he finished, he was breathless; his collar loose, sweat-soaked.
Jeffries made a tent of his fingers and pressed them to his lips.
“Who put you up to this?” the editor said.
Andy didn’t understand. He had another one of those gut feelings. This one was like a slick ice block falling inside him. Falling and falling. He was going to be sick. He had seconds to save his career, to save himself from losing his dream of frontpage headlines and fame.
“Red Phelan,” he said. His deskmate. It was the only name he conjured in that moment.
“Red?” Jeffries said, arching an eyebrow.
“Yes, sir.”
Andy’s face felt in flames.
Then Jeffries did the most unexpected thing. He started laughing. And didn’t stop until he had tears in his eyes. “I don’t go for shenanigans. You must know that about me, Anthony.”
Andy Van Nortwick didn’t correct his boss. Instead, he forced a smile and nodded.
“That I do,” he said.
Jeffries slammed his palm on his enormous desk. Everything jumped. Andy included.
“Like a great engine a newspaper can build up heat. Things will explode, mind you. Depend on it. Unless every so often we let off a little steam. I’m not a humorless man.” He removed his glasses, wiping the lenses. “Is Red here? Is he outside my door listening?” He called out. “You almost had me fooled, you redheaded, ink-stained wretch. But not quite. If you’re there, you might as well come in.”
Andy turned to stare at the open doorway, hoping that Red was anywhere else on earth. He prayed Red was at a ballgame. Somewhere, anywhere, but the newsroom.
His prayers were answered.
Later, Andy bought Red’s future silence on the matter with a case of Canadian whiskey. Red never forgot the dubious deal they made.
“Didn’t know you had it in you, kid. How about picking up a ham sandwich for me?”
