“Why is that?” asked Spector.
“Well, twenty years and more with no interest. And then a year ago, those ‘scholars,’ and now you. Something must be happening out there.” He shivered. “It makes a man glad to be inside someplace safe. I hope it’s safe, anyway.” He grinned suddenly, incongruously, ghoulishly. “It’ll be waiting for you, too, when it gets to be too much out there. It always waits.”
CHAPTER 10
We weren’t able to get any useful description of Upton’s previous visitors from the staff—nothing that couldn’t describe any random handful of gentlemen dressed for business. Spector seemed disgruntled, and begged leave for an immediate private errand, so Charlie and my brother and I squeezed into Trumbull’s car. She moved papers from the back seat to the trunk to make room for us. Caleb rebuffed my attempts to converse, not with his usual sullen anger but with a rawness that encouraged me to give him what space I could.
Charlie twisted around from his seat, and I leaned forward. “Miss Marsh—are you well?”
It took some doing to get such a direct expression of concern from him, although less than it once had. “I’m just…” I tried to put words to my roil of emotion, and failed. “Irked at my family.”
That brought Caleb out of his silence. “They were trying to protect us.”
“They could have done any number of things. Gained his promise of silence, or blackmailed him. Brought him to live in Innsmouth where they could watch over him. Instead they left him imprisoned, when he’d done nothing but the justice the law required.”
“And thought it a sign of all our corruption, not just Waite’s. You know as well as I that it was outsiders living in town who brought the raid down on us. Don’t be absurd, sister dear.” The usual wry term of endearment turned against me like a slap, and he dismissed me in favor of the countryside racing by out the window.
“I suppose we are all human,” said Charlie. I nodded mutely, grateful for the reminder that he at least thought so.
“Sapient,” said Trumbull. Charlie and I both started. “No thinking, feeling being survives by being entirely gentle. Your family is in a greater company than humanity alone.”
Charlie looked at her sideways, but said nothing. It was no surprise that she’d picked up on his awareness of her nature. I found our shared imperfections more reassuring than I would say, but: “I still question their judgment.”
She nodded, not arguing.
“Did you get what you were looking for, this morning?” asked Charlie.
Trumbull nodded again, eyes fixed on the road. “Oh, yes. And then some.”
It occurred to me to ask her, “Are you all right?” In the same breath as I said it, I felt extremely foolish. Of course she wouldn’t answer such a puerile question.
“Yes—although somewhat disturbed to discover that my grasp of this body is so noticeable. I must explore the connection more carefully.”
“From the records,” I said, “people often notice discrepancies when your people make a switch—or simply find the results inexplicably disturbing.”
Trumbull snorted, unladylike. “Some of my people have no subtlety. If every one of our visits were taken note of—outside of the people we deliberately make aware, of course—then such records would be considerably more common.”
I checked Caleb for signs of an oncoming diatribe, but while he glowered a little he didn’t seem inclined to argue. This was a far more comfortable conversation than the previous topic, and I therefore gave in to the question that had piqued my curiosity earlier. “How did you hide the amnesia? I’m sure Dean Skinner would have said something if they’d noticed.”
She chuckled, seeming equally eased by the change of topic. “None of the people here actually know Trumbull, or care to know her. Her family disapprove of her studies and take no interest. And I was fortunate enough to arrive during the summer intersession, so that no classes were interrupted and I had ample time to study her notes and her journals. There was only one servant to witness the faint, and one discreet doctor. I reassured the doctor that even I am sometimes prone to feminine weaknesses, and dismissed the servant with a generous allowance so she need not notice the inevitable changes in habit and personality that might be visible in intimate quarters.”
It was a clever answer, but one particular aspect stood out for me. Ignoring his mood, I grabbed Caleb’s hand, and he turned to me, startled. “Journals! I didn’t think to ask for private journals, but they’ll be right there in the collections. Not just the spellbooks and theology and philosophy, but records of our lives.”
“Oh.” He gaped, and then leaned close into my arms. So quietly I struggled to hear, he murmured, “You keep reminding me that we haven’t lost everything.” I felt my shoulder wet, and held my little brother tightly.
*
The librarian very nearly demanded that I give the full name of every person whose journal I wished to read. However, he surrendered with surprisingly little argument. Perhaps it was our eagerness—or Trumbull’s, which was palpable—or that Miskatonic never inculcated its staff against our private diaries as it did against our more overt theology. He brought us an eclectic stack: pocket daybooks and easel-sized sketchpads, bound in cloth and leather and paper. Some were carefully inscribed with their authors’ names; others went entirely unlabeled.
The collection was not well-sorted, and I got the impression that Miskatonic’s historians had not yet so much as organized them by common script. Charlie took on this task, looking inside covers or reading a few pages and sharing with us the names he found. Trumbull, of course, delved in without shame, which I did not this time begrudge her.
Caleb had been squinting at the same page for several minutes, marking his place with a finger and a fixed glare. “Can you read that?” I asked gently.
He turned his mute glare on me. I came round the table, abandoning my own journal to share his. “We’ll look at it together, if you like.” He grimaced, but moved his chair to the side.