The Horror from the Blizzard

Tarleton waited in the center of the entrance hall for his mother to embrace him. Eventually they broke apart and his mother looked him in the face.

"Are you keeping well, Jack?" she asked. "You look tired."

There was no way he was about to alarm his mother with details of that earlier incident. "A long journey, mother. But I'm very glad to be home."

He just had time to ask about his other brother, Daniel, who was working on reconstruction projects with the American occupying forces in Haiti, before Cartwright led Tarleton up to his old bedroom. Very little had changed. Crossed Varsity football pennants took up one wall, his old baseball bat and catcher's mitt lay on the dresser, where he'd left them before going to Baffin Island... he turned his mind swiftly away; and on the bookcase, rows of books, the gilt writing on their spines sparkling. His trunks had arrived on an earlier train and Cartwright had already unpacked.

Tarleton ran himself a bath, as hot as he could stand, and relaxed. His earlier fear washed away in the steaming waters until it had no more force than a half-forgotten nightmare. A reaction to stress, he told himself. That's all it was.

Giving himself plenty of time, Tarleton dressed for dinner as he knew his parents expected that courtesy and he knew they would have invited business friends and neighbors. One of the undecayed Whateleys, from a different branch of that infamous family; also the Baxters who owned a broker's house in New York together with the Middletons -- cloth manufacturers from the mill town of Bolton.

During the dinner, the senior Middleton talked about the illegal prize-fights the workers of that town indulged in. The bouts had died down during the Great War but since demobilization and the return of the men from the Western Front the fights had started up with a renewed vigor. They regretted that Dr. West had gone onto Boston after the War ended instead of returning to Bolton.

"A very great medic, a big loss to our town, Dr. West had a way with the mill-hands and took such care of them," Mr. Middleton said.

The Middletons had brought their daughter, Olivia, and she sat directly opposite Tarleton. Once there had been an understanding between them. Nothing had been said but both families expected the pair to announce their engagement at some point. But then had come Baffin Island and Tarleton's collapse so their affection cooled. The two had corresponded during his time in Austin, mostly about events in Arkham and mutual acquaintances. Tarleton heard that Olivia had been going out with one of the younger Baxters for part of the time he'd been away but that had also broken up.

Tarleton looked across the silver table decoration in which fruit and vine leaves were artfully arranged. Olivia looked across at him and her lips raised in a little smile. Olivia was beautiful with long ash-blonde hair and pale blue eyes showing her mother's Swedish ancestry. She wore a light-blue silk gown which complemented her complexion to perfection.

Looking at her, Tarleton was reminded of a Nordic ice-queen, cold and imperious. He shivered but returned Olivia's smile. In Texas, Tarleton had come to appreciate the southern charms of the Latina girls. Most especially those from the old Mexican families who owned land there long before the coming of the Anglos.

Under Cartwright's supervision, the hired waiters removed the dishes from the fish course and then placed lemon sorbets before the diners to cleanse their palates. Tarleton looked at the small dish of flavored ice. He shuddered and tried to restrain that sense of overpowering horror which had gripped him earlier in the Italian restaurant. His eyes widened as he watched the others eat their sorbets. Didn't they know what they were eating? Ice -- frozen water.

The total soul-chilling cold of frozen ice. Ice from thousands of years ago, ice that had lain undisturbed for millennia, covering long forgotten peoples and realms. Ice spreading with the centuries, burying the world with terrible blinding whiteness, the glaciers expanding crushing civilization beneath the Arctic floes.

"Excuse me," Tarleton mumbled. He stood, carefully, making sure he didn't draw unwanted attention to himself and left the dining room. He crossed the atrium, opened the front door and stepped out into the grounds. Whippoorwills were chirping in the undergrowth, their familiar, well-remembered song helping to clear Tarleton's mind of its confusion. He leaned against one of the Doric pillars supporting the portico and looked out over the darkened grounds.

Eventually, his breathing returned to normal, his heart slowed. Where had all that nonsense about glaciers and the end of long-lost civilizations come from? The desserts were only sorbets, harmless little dishes. Nothing else. Realizing that he was being rude, or at least eccentric, Tarleton took a last breath of night air and then returned to the banquet his parents had laid on. However, everybody was too polite to comment on his temporary absence.

By now, the sorbets had been cleared away and the waiters were serving roast beef with potatoes and steamed vegetables. The rich smell of the roasts filled the room. A waiter poured Tarleton a glass of Merlot and the full-bodied sweet wine helped him relax further. He stretched his legs out under the table. Yes, it was just the stress following the long journey up from Austin and returning back to Arkham.

Tarleton enjoyed the rest of the meal and took part in the conversation with his father and the other men over port and cigars before rejoining the ladies in the drawing room. The men were eager to hear news from Texas. Finally, at long last, the evening ended, the last guest left and Tarleton was glad to go to his room.

He had no nightmares that night.

* * *

September slipped into October. Tarleton was busy at Miskatonic. He taught some classes of freshman students in both geography and geology. His specialty was the ancient igneous rocks of the northern United States and Canada. He collated the rock specimens and photographs brought back by Professor Atkinson from his trips to Mexico and Central America. He imagined the sun warming these rocks, so very different from the barren Arctic wastes of..., no his mind skittered away from those terrible images. Also, he marked papers and did a little research into volcanism and the new theories of plate tectonics.

He spent some time in the library but kept well away from those locked doors leading to the basement. Those subterranean vaults containing, according to repute, those tomes that the Chief Librarian, Dr. Henry Armitage, only allowed certain trusted researchers permission to access. Like many fellows and students, Tarleton had heard rumors as to the names of some of those books but even the boldest students spoke of them only in whispers. Officially, of course, the very existence of these books was denied.

Massachusetts' fall foliage was spectacular and from his room in his parents mansion high up on French Hill he could see the forests in the distance. The vivid reds, oranges and yellows with a dash of plum brightened the vista but as the month progressed, more and more the browns dominated. A clear portent that another New England winter was on its way.

* * *

Halloween was on a Friday that year. That always made that evil day worse. Those more sensitive to atmosphere made sure they kept in good company that day -- and especially during the evening and night. The saloons and beer-cellars did a roaring trade as men drowned their fears. The poorer people, mostly Italian and Polish immigrants, kept their children close and whispered about the unholy rites taking place on that unhallowed witch-island on the Miskatonic.

All the same, they couldn't keep an eye on all their numerous children and two small boys, on their way back from school took a short-cut through the wooded cemetery on Hangman's Hill and were never heard of again. Three Polish laborers out late at night delivering things they were reluctant about declaring to the Revenue reported that a light, a hideous greenish-purple light, shone like a wartime searchlight from the hills to the north.

The men had been drinking and many people, especially ignorant newcomers, put it down to the amount of moonshine slivovitz plum brandy they had consumed. Especially when they tried to replicate the deep, booming chant they heard as soon as the greenish-purple light hit the clouds. "Fhunglooi maglaw'naf Cthuloo Rllyh wga'nagel fhtagt," was the closest the two men got with the inhuman syllables.

However, those who had lived in Arkham all their lives, especially those from old families living in the area for generations, understood the significance of that misheard chant and crossed themselves.

Tarleton sauntered along College Street to the University. It was a fresh, crisp autumn morning bringing the tang of wood smoke with it. Tarleton enjoyed the walk and, although he noticed the hurrying footsteps and furtive looks of people around him, that didn't spoil his stroll.

Looking up, Tarleton appreciated the beauty of the ivy covering the clock tower. The leaves were a deep rich red, shading towards purple. He walked under the archway, checked his mail at the lodge and then around the quadrangle and up to Professor Bamford's rooms. The door was ajar and so Tarleton let himself in. There was no sign of Bamford himself but an untimed note left on his desk said he would be back in half an hour.

Tarleton moved a stack of papers covering the seat and sat in a well-worn armchair. He placed the papers on top of a book about eastern Anatolia and the Armenian dispersal. The mound was unsteady and the papers slipped off onto the carpet. Leaning over, Tarleton picked them up, leafing through the papers out of curiosity as he did so.

The young man gasped in shock. The University was planning another expedition to Baffin Island next summer. Tarleton collapsed back in the chair, his breath catching in his throat. The papers fell from his nerveless hands, fluttering to the floor. It was as if the last three years had vanished. In an instant, Tarleton was back on Baffin Island.

CHAPTER 3: BAFFIN ISLAND.

June, 1916.

War had raged in Europe for over two years but as their chartered barque, the Margarite Ohlsen, nosed its way north past the fjords of Baffin Island, the war was the furthest thing from anyone's mind. Tarleton and his friend, Arthur Hatley, stood in the bow of the ship; binoculars raised and keeping an eye open for stray bergs. They were sailing up Cumberland Sound, their small ship merely a speck in the vastness dominated by lofty, windswept mountains.

On their starboard side -- Hatley still insisted on calling it right just to annoy the sailors -- the grey mountains of Baffin Island sailed past. They passed Thor Peak with its towering cliffs and soon after the huge serrated crags of Mount Odin, vaster than the mightiest castle, came into view. Even in summer, their peaks and upper slopes were still white with snow. It was a bleak, austere landscape, rocky and ice bound.

It was a mixed expedition the University had sent out. Historians and archaeologists looking for traces of Scandinavian settlements to prove that Baffin Island was indeed the Norse Helluland -- Stone Land as they called it in their sagas. Ethnographers and medical researchers wanted to contact the indigenous Inuit peoples, partly to offer an immunization program but also to trace the origins of the legends the people told about themselves.

Geographers wanted to study the glaciers; biologists the Arctic animals such as caribou, Arctic hares and foxes as well as the numerous Ringed and Bearded seals whilst Tarleton himself was more interested in the geology and collecting as many different rock samples as he could.

The expedition was well equipped with no expense spared. A team of cooks and technicians travelled with them, together with handlers to look after the Siberian huskies. The centerpiece was a mobile laboratory, prefabricated at Boston containing all the latest scientific equipment.

Tarleton was pleased that he'd been accepted.

The Margarite Ohlsen nosed into an inlet set between two rocky outcrops. A crewman sounded out the depths with a plumb-weight but it was a deep fjord. Their skipper, Captain Calderbank, was happy as this natural harbor was safe; unless the wind blew directly from the south-east which it very rarely did. The anchor rattled and the ship slowed to a standstill. The crew climbed the shrouds and, singing a shanty, furled the sails. Boats were lowered and rowed across to a shingle beach in the lea of the foothills of a mountain.

Over the course of the next few days everyone worked hard moving a mountain of stores and getting everything ashore before covering them with tarpaulins; setting up the mobile laboratory hut, as well as the large mess tent and storage structures and then pegging everything down against the ever present wind. Due to the Arctic summer, the men were able to work eighteen hours a day as the sun merely dipped below the horizon.

As soon as all the ground work was completed, the Margarite Ohlsen backed out of the fjord and carried on with its exploration of the coast. Captain Calderbank ordered signal flags to be lowered and the squares made vivid splashes of color against the grey mountains and cloudy skies. All the scientists and crew waved the vessel off.

Only one man would ever see it again.

Dr. Philip Welham of History led the expedition. He was a tall, broad man, now in his fifties, but strong and well able to cope with the rigors of a 'field trip', as he called it, far from the safety of civilization. During the spring and on the voyage up from Boston, he'd grown out his beard and now looked like a seasoned Viking warrior. He needed only a helmet and axe to look exactly like those seafarers who had landed on Helluland almost a thousand years before.

For himself, Dr. Welham's main interest was in the Inuit tribes of the island's coast and their myths, legends and ancestral beliefs. On an earlier trip back in 1909 to the coast of Labrador Dr. Welham had heard fables about lost cities to the north that had long since been covered by the ice cap. He thought that the legends referred to nothing more than abandoned Norse settlements on Markland, as the Vikings called Labrador, or Helluland and that the 'cities' referred to nothing more than stone built farmsteads or temporary shelters.

However, to the nomadic Inuit, even these structures would have seemed strongly built and over the centuries the scale of the buildings had grown in the Inuit imaginations. However, he relished the chance to delve further into the rumors and maybe establish the amount of interaction between the Viking pasturers and traders and the native peoples before these settlements were finally abandoned.

After making sure that the base camp was well founded and secure, the following day Dr. Welham led a smaller expedition further north up the coast. The men had to detour inland to avoid the fjords which bit deeply into the coast. However, their two Inuit guides, brothers named Chugach and Iluliaq, were very experienced and had spent many summers hunting seals and walrus along this rugged shoreline.

Tarleton attached himself to this trip as he wanted to collect samples of the igneous rocks in order to form a detailed geologic map of this little known area. Arthur Hatley, the biologist, also went in order to survey the Arctic sea birds that used the cliffs for their nests.

The first few days out were perfect. Both Tarleton and Hatley were struck by the desolation of the land. Towering cliffs, their pinnacles covered with snow dominated the scene. Rocky scree tumbled down their slopes. Glaciers, their surfaces slashed by deep unfathomable crevasses pushed down the valleys and into the sea where ice bergs drifted south. Their colors were otherworldly -- shades of blues, greys, greens and purples vivid amidst the whiteness and the young men compared the larger bergs with fantastical castles or cathedrals.

And over it all howled the ever present north wind making Baffin Island's summer even shorter and colder than normal for its high latitude. The gales gusted down the mountains and the June days were barely above freezing whilst during the nights the thermometer dipped below ten degrees Fahrenheit.

Apart from low-growing mosses and lichens, there were few plants and the bleak rocky landscape looked inimical to mankind. As the group pushed ever onwards under the shadows of the mountains and cliffs, Tarleton began to feel that they had ventured far beyond the realm of modern man and into the sphere of far older beings. However, despite his misgivings, he carried on with collecting his samples and found some black pre-Cambrian basalts that he believed represented some of the oldest rocks in the world.

Apart from one camp-fire surrounded by seal bones at the head of a fjord they found no trace of any human habitation, present or past and the vast emptiness pressed down on Tarleton's spirits. However, Dr. Welham was not downhearted. As he told the group during one rest break, "Baffin Island is the world's fifth largest island and finding small settlements from a thousand years ago is like hunting for the proverbial needle in a haystack. And a rusty needle at that."

The two guides admitted they had never come across any ruins in the area but as that search was only a part of the reason for the trip, Dr. Welham did not think it was a waste of time.

However, on the fourth day out, the weather closed in. Initial flurries of snow became a full blown blizzard and the party trudged on, heads down, their breath freezing onto their fur-lined hoods. Only the huskies looked like they were enjoying the conditions until one of the sleds hit a rock just under the surface and overturned. The men stopped, righted the sled, fixed and greased its runner and sorted out the dog's tangled traces but it all took time. They broke for lunch in the lea of a glacial moraine before carrying on.

Skirting the edge of the Penny ice cap, the team's progress was next blocked by a glacier. The river of ice was deeply fissured and a bottomless crevasse split it. Carefully, with ropes around their waists and Iluliaq leading, the guides edged out onto the ice. They cast to left and right and tested the surface with their poles. Shaking their heads, the Inuits told Dr. Welham that there was no way over the glacier.

"So what shall we do?" Dr. Welham asked them.

They pointed to the west, inland. "We shall have to go around the ice," Chugach told him.

Tarleton and Hatley looked where the guides were pointing. Over the millennia, the glacier had gouged a valley through the mountains. However, there was a steep uphill slope that would require hard work to traverse. The Arctic wind blasted down through the mountains.

"How long is the glacier? How far have we got to go?" Dr. Welham queried.

The two Inuit looked at each other and spoke in their own language.

Eventually Chugach looked up at Dr. Welham. "When hunting, we stick to the coast -- no reason to go inland. I think we go uphill we come to a patch where we cross the glacier."

Dr. Welham thought for a moment. "It's not like we have to hurry back. We're packing plenty of supplies. Let's go on."

Leading the way, Chugach and Iluliaq turned inland and followed the edge of the glacier uphill. The going was steep and the men had to put their shoulders to the sleds to help the dogs but as they climbed the men were rewarded with the most spectacular views any of them had ever seen. In the distance the Davis Strait separating Baffin Island from Greenland stretched pure and clean to the horizon. The waters were a deep cerulean blue speckled with icebergs and ice floes. A whale breached the surface before splashing down. Above them, the mountains soared sheer and tall, grey frosted with white, home to innumerable sea birds wheeling and diving and taking advantage of the short Arctic summer.