Ghouls of the Miskatonic (The Dark Waters Trilogy) Read Online Free Page A

slamming her cheek into the cinders. She rolled and spat dirt, grabbing her ankle with a howl of frustration. She could already feel the joint begin to swell and the pain throbbing up her shin told her that, at the very least, she’d sprained it badly.
    Gritting her teeth against the pain, she looked to see what had tripped her.
    “What the hell…?” she said, not sure she was seeing it right.
    It looked like a tattered dress, black and sequined, with corn-colored butterflies stitched around the hems. The cloth was torn, as if it had been cut up with long pinking scissors, and Rita saw it was wet with a sticky liquid. Pink and red lumps laced with wriggling insects protruded from the arms and bottom of the dress.
    A moment later Rita saw the bloody remains of the girl wrapped in the dress.
    And this time it was her turn to scream.

 
    CHAPTER TWO

     
     
     
     
    Rivet guns and the sound of hammers echoed over New York’s East River Shipyard, reverberating off the cavernous assembly sheds as waterfalls of sparks fell from acetylene torches welding heavy sheets of steel together. The shipyard employed nearly ten thousand men: fitters, welders, riveters, steelworkers, panel beaters, riggers, glassblowers, surveyors, engineers, electricians, and skilled machine operators.
    The vessel currently berthed in dry dock 23F was the DCV Matilda Rose , a deepwater construction vessel that was nearing completion. The vessel belonged to the Warren Mining Company, a business that had prospered under the ineffectual presidency of Warren Harding and the benevolence of the corrupt Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall.
    In 1922, the Wall Street Journal had uncovered evidence that Fall had leased government petroleum fields at Elk Hills and Teapot Dome to oilmen in return for huge bribes and numerous gifts. One of the benefactors of this had been the oilman Charles Warren, and though the fields at Elk Hills had since been returned to the government, his drilling rigs’ brief tenure on the land had made him millions of dollars. Though the ensuing scandal had hit Warren and the other oilmen hard, America’s voracious consumption ensured that their businesses weathered the storm without noticeable ill-effect.  
    Work on the DCV Matilda Rose had begun at the East River Shipyard the year before, and her launch date was set for early November. The foreman of the shipyard was optimistic that he and his work gangs would hit that deadline. Designed to build offshore drilling platforms, the vessel was ungainly and ugly, but would allow Charles Warren’s drillers to reach oil fields that had, until now, been inaccessible via conventional means.
    Her decks swarmed with workers, mainly steel fabricators and welders fitting the last portions of her deck and winch gear. A giant A-frame crane rose in the middle of the ship, and it was here that Patrick Doyle and his workmate, Martin Quinn, watched the quayside cranes lifting a tarpaulin-covered object onto the forked fantail at the rear of the ship. Patrick and Martin had, together with a veritable army of welders, recently finished attaching a complex series of winches and cable drums to the Matilda Rose and were enjoying a well-deserved break.
    “So what d’ye reckon that’ll be then, Patrick?” asked Martin, carving a slice of his apple with a small pocket-knife and nodding toward the object being maneuvered into position by a gang of foreigners. They were mulattos and oriental-looking types mostly, but among them were a sprinkling of strange looking men of uncommon bulk with skin burnished bronze in distant lands.  
    “Damned if I know, laddie,” shrugged Patrick. He took a drink from an unmarked glass bottle and handed it to Martin. “Here, a drop o’ the real stuff. By God, we’ve earned it.”
    “Aye, that we have, Patrick,” agreed Martin, taking a slug of the Irish whiskey. “Saints alive, Patrick, where did ye get that from? That’s whiskey right enough, none of your bathtub