"So that's what happened?" Chancellor Roberts said at last. "I wondered if it would be...," he lowered his voice and whispered, "B’gnu-Thun, the Soul-Chilling Ice-God that was written about in the Pnakotic Manuscripts?"
Professor Bamford looked up. Although he was no expert; that name didn't sound like anything coming from Inuktun, the language spoken around Labrador or the west coast of Greenland, or Yupik Innu from Alaska.
"B’gnu-Thun?" Bamford queried. "Who or what is B'gnu-Thun?"
"Working here, you must be aware of the legends, Andrew. How the Great Old Ones lived aeons before there were any people before coming to the young Earth from beyond the stars. These Great Old Ones are vanished now – deep inside the earth and under the sea; but their undead bodies told their secrets in dreams to the first men. Some of these men formed cults which have never died waiting for the time when the Great Old Ones will rise again and bring the Earth again beneath their rule."
"Yes, I've heard of these rumours but never gave them much credence. Anyway, before we do anything, Chancellor, shall we get young Jack to the infirmary?"
Chancellor Roberts nodded abstractedly, his mind elsewhere. "Yes, yes, of course." He picked up the desk phone and asked the switchboard to put him through to Dr. Waldron. Professor Bamford heard the Chancellor murmur something about a collapse; yes young Jack Tarleton.
A few minutes later, two white-clad medical students arrived with a stretcher. A quick examination showed that Tarleton was comatose but breathing easily and without any obvious injuries so the two medics carried him away.
"Thank you," said Chancellor Roberts politely to their backs as he closed the door behind them.
"Do we still have the statue that was brought back?" Professor Bamford asked, taking a sip of his drink.
"I should think so, Andrew," Chancellor Roberts said. "That object was the only thing of value brought back from that debacle."
"You know, I never saw any scientific papers written on it? Not even in our own in-house university publication," Professor Bamford commented.
"No. It's not been... comprehensively evaluated yet," Chancellor Roberts said.
Professor Bamford looked at his friend and colleague. "Not even after three years?"
"These things need time," Chancellor Roberts said, evasively.
"Would it be possible to see it?" Professor Bamford asked.
Taking his time, Chancellor Roberts poured out two more glasses of bourbon. "Soda?" he asked.
Professor Bamford shook his head. "You should know by now I don't take soda water. Why don't we take a look at this statue."
"If you insist, Andrew. But I must warn you, it is quite shocking."
Professor Bamford sipped his bourbon. "I'm a grown man, Chancellor. I think I can cope with looking at a sculpture. Even those Dadaist ones from Europe that they call modern art," he laughed.
Chancellor Roberts rang a bell and one of his undergraduates knocked. Professor Bamford recognised him as a man having an interest in occult matters. The Chancellor scribbled on a piece of notepaper, signed it before folding it and sealing it inside an envelope. "Take this to Dr. Armitage with my compliments and ask him to release this exhibit to my custody. It will be for only a few hours."
The man nodded and left. Chancellor Roberts turned the conversation onto other subjects – the political instability in Europe and Russia and then onto the chess club's prospects. It was hard going as both men's minds were on that strange sculpture. Eventually, the young man returned carrying a small padlocked wooden crate. He gently set it down.
"Here you are, sir." He fished a key from his pocket and laid it down on the crate. It gleamed yellow in the afternoon sunlight. "Will that be all?"
"Yes, Herbert, thank you."
The young man left but he looked disappointed not to be invited to stay for the box's opening.
"Are you sure?" Chancellor Roberts asked, waiting for his friend's nod. He crossed to the box, unlocked it and then opened the lid. He rummaged through the protective spills of paper, pulled out an oil cloth and unwrapped it.
Even though he was expecting something ugly, something eldritch and frightening, Professor Bamford stepped back from that hideous jade idol of an emaciated humanoid with its over-large, starving eyes that seemed to stare right through him. Its workmanship was definitely not of Inuit origin and it gave off an impression of extreme age.
"I..., I..., I hadn't expected that, Chancellor. It's quite horrible. And this is the only thing of value that was brought back from Baffin Island?"
"Yes. Apart from a few papers and rock samples, of course."
"It's a shame that abomination was brought back to civilisation," Professor Bamford said slowly. To put some space between him and that image, he crossed over to the window and looked out over the quadrangle. The October light had faded and the sky was covered by thick cumulonimbus. The clouds blocked the sunlight and the temperature was dropping. Those few students still out hurried along the paths.
"Looks like we're due an early snowfall, Chancellor," Professor Bamford mused. "Most unusual. It was so warm earlier in the day."
The Chancellor looked up from repacking the statue. "Unusual, yes. But it will be November tomorrow. Now, when I was a boy, we had some really severe winters. The late fall of 1866 will live long in my memory. We went tobogganing down Hangman's Hill. I fell off and cracked my head against a tree stump. My mother was furious..."
Professor Bamford nodded and said 'yes' or 'no' as appropriate. He looked out of the window as the first flakes sprinkled down. They were already sticking to the lawns and the slate roofs opposite. The slate was the same colour as the low-lying clouds. Professor Bamford shivered. He thought it might be best to take his students essays home with him rather than marking them here.
* * *
Night fell early. The campus fell silent, blanketed under the still falling snow. White fell on white. Snowflakes poured down from the sky and the oldest residents of Arkham compared it with the winter of 1866 which was exceptionally long and cold and the very oldest talked about what they had heard from their grandparents of the winter of 1814.
And still the snow fell, heavily and unceasingly.
* * *
There were only two patients in the infirmary ward. Jack Tarleton and a man named Merrell who had broken his leg during an unfortunate football tackle. Tarleton moaned and stirred before sitting up. He rubbed his forehead, confused by the strange surroundings. After a while, the smell of disinfectant and medicine told him where he was. During the night, the light in the infirmary was kept dim however at the end of the ward, Tarleton saw a desk lamp over by the nurse's station.
He wanted a drink and wondered where everyone was. He pushed the bed-covers down and swung his legs out of the bed. He called out, weakly, through parched lips. There was no response. Tarleton called out again, a little louder. Merrell rolled over, his arm flopped out of the bed an he muttered thickly.
Not wanting to disturb the other man, Tarleton stood and walked down the centre aisle between the beds. He looked up at the high, arched windows of the infirmary. Through the darkness outside, Tarleton couldn't be sure but was it snowing out? Surely not. Not at the start of November, he thought as he padded down the aisle.
"Hello," he called out when he reached the nurse's station. "Anyone there?" There was no answer. He knocked on the door and entered the small room. A small coal fire burned in the hearth and a kettle stood on the grate. A rota chart marked with coloured pencils was pinned up on one wall. A few old arm chairs were scattered around. Tarleton picked up the day's copy of the Arkham Advertiser before dropping it again.
Where was everyone? Could it be they were dealing with a patient in one of the isolation rooms? Wondering, Tarleton left the room and checked the corridor leading to the isolation rooms. Apart from one, which was locked tight, the rooms were open and a glance inside showed they were empty.
Turning around, Tarleton returned the way he'd come. This time, a sudden chill made him notice that the vestibule leading to the quadrangle outside was standing ajar. Tarleton shuddered. A thin skittering of snow had blown in and blew over the black and white tiled floor. Coldness gripped his heart and squeezed tight. Tarleton paused, unsure what to do. Even as he paused a gust carried in more flakes of pristine white to join the rest on the floor. Should he return to the safety of his warm bed and wait for the orderlies to return? But that was a false safety, suitable only for little boys.
The wind howled outside, the gusts stronger. It almost sounded as if there were human voices out there in the cold darkness. Human voices and worse as the wind blew around the rafters and chimneys. Undecided what to do, Tarleton took a step closer to the door and then another. His bare feet chill on the snow covered cold tiles. Reluctantly, Tarleton stood by the heavy black painted door. The wind picked up outside.
Suddenly Tarleton felt fear. Real fear. Worse than looking at the block of ice outside the Italian restaurant earlier that day. He had to close that door, slam it against whatever was on the outside. Slowly, shuffling over the skein of snow, Tarleton approached the door. Quivering with an unspoken fear, Tarleton put out his hand to close it.
The air coming through the gap between door and jamb was sub-zero, far too cold for the first night of November. A blast from the high Arctic wastes. He touched the old wood before the door was thrust open hard. The door smashed back, ripping against the jamb, the wood by its hinges tearing and splintering.
It was what stood in the open doorway that made Tarleton scream. Scream and scream again. A giant figure, like yet unlike a man. Abnormally tall, towering over the cowering man. Impossibly emaciated, hollowed out. Its skin tone a terrible cyanosed blue as the blizzard emanated from its body, disguising yet emphasising its skeletal look, snowflakes pouring from it.
Its long arms stretched out and plucked the screaming man up and lifted him up to its mouth. Despite its stick-thin arms, the creature possessed immense strength and it raised Tarleton up to his mouth as easily as if he weighed less than a snowflake. Its staring, bulging eyes shimmered with all the colours of the northern lights as its icicle-fanged mouth open wide, wider than the gates of hell. Tarleton struggled one last time before the fangs bit down into his body.
Then he was helpless as his very life force was sucked away to feed the monster. Slowly at first as if the monster was savouring his taste and then faster as its endless greed forced it to drink faster. Tarleton saw the white-out fade to grey and then black. The darkness of the interstellar voids where the temperature never rises above absolute zero. Shortly after, his emptied lifeless, desiccated body was tossed away to fetch up against a snowdrift.
His soul though – his soul joined those toiling for all eternity beneath the ice-dæmon's whips in the ice caves of Hrak far below the cold northern wastes of Dreamland's Kadath.