The Fourth Interlude from "The Return of Patrick Midnight"

Arbogast reveals another transmission from his forthcoming book

Image via G Midnight Photoshoot by Candlelight - Gary Randall

Midnight could not believe his eyes. Through the tight, foul-smelling mask he saw the beautiful and very naked specter of Eleanor Nash, late of Brookline, Massachusetts. Her pale, almost ethereal form danced in the moonlight. Her appearance next to the bonfire elicited sounds of excitement and arousal amidst the equally masked throng. Midnight could not help himself, either; the beautiful woman’s naked form excited him too.

The less animalistic part of his brain quickly recounted the strange events that had led him to the legend-haunted island of Anglesey. Two months before, the name Eleanor Nash had meant nothing to Midnight. The former special agent for the Society of Gentlemen Geographers had then been more concerned with keeping the lights on in his office. Ever since hanging up his shingle as a private detective, Midnight had struggled for work. At first, he made a hard rule against divorce cases. This rule collapsed after the third round of heavy bills drained Midnight’s business account. At that point, he had to reduce Myra Copley’s hours, which the secretary was not pleased about. In return, Midnight was not happy about having to reach out to Stanley Hopkins with hat in hand, but fortunately his old friend managed to land him a few jobs without too much needling (there was of course some needling). But the Eleanor Nash job came about because of an aggrieved husband—a husband named Oscar Nash.

The man came into Midnight’s Beacon Hill office like a tornado. A whirling dervish of houndstooth fabric and pleated pants topped with the world’s ugliest Homburg. Oscar Nash then plopped his untoward girth down into one of Midnight’s leather seats.

“How can I help you, sir?”

“It’s my wife, Mr. Midnight. She’s left me.” Oscar Nash looked like a carnival barker and spoke like one too. The man’s strong Bostonian accent shot out of the left corner of his crooked mouth. Midnight took an instant dislike to him. But it was the hot and depressing summer of 1935, and Midnight needed any work he could get.

“Do you suspect infidelity?”

“Yes, and I know the bum she’s doing it with.”

Midnight reached into his desk drawer and removed a leatherbound notebook. He then took an expensive fountain pen from the coffee mug at the far-right corner of his desk. Oscar Nash said something nice about both items.

“Gifts from my wife,” Midnight said with a hint of sadness. Things were not going well with Fay, but his client did not need to know that. “Tell me about your wife’s lover, Mr…”

“Nash. N-A-S-H. A simple, salt-of-the-earth name. Nothing fancy; nothing glitzy. And you know what? That’s the problem! My Eleanor…she always wants more.”

“And the other man?”

“Oh, that bum!” Oscar Nash pounded his fist on Midnight’s desk. “A creep of a professor with a put-on accent. Livesey is his name. Owain Livesey. Claims all sort of nonsense about himself, but the biggest crock is that he’s a healer.”

“A healer of what?” Midnight inquired.

“Of everything. This bum professor claims that all ailments are caused by dietary imbalances and bad spiritual energies. You know—pure mumbo-jumbo. Unfortunately, my wife believes that crud.”

“Ok. Tell me more about your wife. You said her name is Eleanor?”

“Yeah. Eleanor Nash. She was originally McKeon. Comes from the South Shore close to Brockton. She pretends to be sophisticated these days, but she ain’t even lace-curtain Irish. She’s closer to shantytown Irish—like me. But she does have smarts; I’ll give her that. And she reads all the time. Constantly has her nose in a book. Her favorite subjects are murder mysteries and ghost stories. She also has a thing for Spiritualism. That’s how she fell in with Livesey. The guy hosts a weekly séance soiree on campus.”

“Which university?”

“Boston College. It amazes me that the good Jesuits still tolerate him…”

“Ok,” Midnight said as his pen raced across the page. “Do you want me to prove that your wife is seeing this man?”

“No,” Oscar Nash groused, “I already know that they’re an item. I want you to bring her back to me.”

“Where has she gone?”

“She went with the Svengali prick to England!”

***

In the week preceding his journey across the Atlantic, Midnight did his best to investigate Dr. Owain Livesey. Through a subtle bribe to Boston College, Midnight obtained the professor’s record, address, and other vital information. Through it, Midnight learned that Livesey was a well-polished conman. An instant charmer who cultivated a British accent when he was in fact nothing more than a native of Bath, Maine. He had obtained a degree from Cambridge, Midnight learned, and he also discovered that Livesey had served for two years as the private chauffeur of the infamous Charles Swinburne, aka the Mad Mauler of the Fens. Between 1920 and 1924, Swinburne had massacred hundreds of cats, dogs, foxes, and cattle in the area of the Cambridgeshire Fens. When the police closed in on him following a solid year of local outcry and accusations, Swinburne murdered his wife and set his mansion ablaze before finally killing himself with an ancient fowling piece. The case, which should have been relegated to the back pages as another tragic tale of a lunatic, made national news in England owing to the discovery of Swinburne’s writings. The Mad Mauler had been a prodigious experimenter and diarist, with his sole goal being the refinement of long-lost druidic rituals. In summation, Midnight discovered that Swinburne thought of himself as a Celtic high priest of the old religion, and Livesey had been his understudy.

It took Midnight several days to follow Livesey’s trail from the society salons of London to the far-flung island of Anglesey. The path was winding, as the private investigator learned more and more unnerving facts about the mysterious professor. He heard in London about several wives who had abandoned their husbands for the purposes of attending a prolonged health retreat in Wales. In a village in Shropshire, the private detective had his ear bent backwards by a tavernkeeper concerned about the recent animal depopulations in the area. Finally, after arriving in Cardiff, Midnight made contact with a police inspector who wanted Livesey and his group to answer certain pressing questions about a rash of burglaries in the borderlands. Altogether, Midnight concluded that Livesey was not only a confidence man and a trickster, but also a blackguard with unsavory intentions towards his harem of married women.

However, even the darkest suppositions could not prepare Midnight for what he ultimately discovered. That night, whilst incognito as a celebrant, Midnight learned that the island of Anglesey—long a seat of druidic power since before the coming of the Romans—still abounded with pagan practices. And Eleanor Nash was as dedicated to the old rites as Livesey, for Midnight watched in horror as she writhed naked upon a sacrificial altar already covered in the spilt blood of a lamb. Her movements were copied by the masked revelers, which forced Midnight to follow suit.

“What am I to do now?” the private investigator thought to himself. He was completely in the dark about the point of the ceremony, but he knew enough about black magic to worry about the dark shadow in the woods that stood deathly still behind the robed figure of Owain Livesey. As the conman-priest droned on, and as the mixture of male and female revelers writhed on, Midnight caught glimpses of the large wicker figure that towered menacingly in the distance.

“A vile assortment. ‘Tis the most blasphemous orgy mine eyes have ever seen!” Reverend Blackstone bellowed his curse from the pit of Midnight’s stomach. The noise shocked the private detective, for his ancestral shade had taken to only haunting Midnight’s home ever since the forced disbandment of the Society of Gentlemen Geographers.

“What are we to do?” asked Midnight.

“I shall show these vermin real power.”

As the central bonfire grew in power and brightness, and as the revelry reached a fevered pitch, a low, booming voice cut through the warm night air and offered a warning.

“Lo! This assemblage has forfeited the Kingdom of God,” the disembodied voice said. “Stand fast here and forever be damned.”

Midnight recognized Blackstone’s voice immediately, while the awestruck dancers ceased their motions. Livesey tried to recapture their euphoria, but his words fell flat in the face of the supernatural.

“Do not forget about the great burning!” Livesey shouted. “The evil energies are to be extinguished by the holocaust of the lower lifeforms.” With this, Livesey pointed towards the wicker figure shrouded in darkness.

“Silence, knave! Thou cannot charm or cajole against the Almighty Lord.” Blackstone roared from somewhere in the midnight air. The Puritan’s words grew in volume and severity until, like the eruption of a volcano, he appeared in the night sky. His semi-corporeal form, which only showed his stern and dour visage, covered the entire sky, even obscuring the moon. The image terrorized the revelers into a blind panic, causing many to drop to their knees in Christian prayer. Even Midnight stood awestruck by the sheer power of Blackstone’s abilities. Never before had he seen such a massive display of the Puritan ghost’s capabilities.

“Flee now and seek salvation!”

Blackstone’s commandment was heeded by the crowd, who raced off into the Welsh countryside. Even Livesey ran in clamorous horror, discarding his robe in the process. When Eleanor Nash attempted to follow her paramour, Midnight grabbed her wrist.

“It’s time for you to go home,” he said.

The young woman growled like a dog until she collapsed in an exhausted heap in Midnight’s arms. A close inspection of her skin revealed the telltale marks of multiple morphine injections. The woman was under the influence and had been for some time.

“Get the lass clothed and safely away,” Blackstone said from up above. “I shall take care of this mess.”

Midnight looked once more about the wicker monstrosity, which proved to be the subject of Blackstone’s ire. Somehow, even despite the obsidian blackness of the country night, Midnight could see the faint glow of canine and feline eyes pleading for help.

“My goodness was he going to burn…” Blackstone cut Midnight off.

“Think no more of it, lad. Do your duty, and I will do mine.”

Midnight swaddled Eleanor Nash in the remnants of Livesey’s long gray cloak. Together, the pair walked towards one of the cars left behind by the panicked throng. From there they would journey to Cardiff and then Boston. Eleanor Nash would return to her husband, but only for a little while. Midnight later received a telegram from San Francisco describing Eleanor’s involvement in something called The Temple of the Holy Grail. The sender, Oscar Nash, made hay about his ex-wife reverting to her maiden name. Midnight filed the telegram away and wrote a pithy response:

Give up the ghost.