Anton Akeley
Night watchman
- Age
- 64
- From
- Vermont
- Lives
- Water Row Tenements
- Now
- In Arkham
Before Arkham's business
Born in Vermont in 1862, the son of a Methodist minister. He worked nights to pay for night school. Has worked as a night watchman for 7 years, and knows the hours when nobody else is awake.
Watchful, restless and credulous, with a sardonic wit. He keeps his own counsel. He takes risks without noticing he is taking them. He believes some things should stay buried.
Afraid of
mirrors at night · hospitals
Believes
There's an explanation for everything, if you can stand to hear it.
From the journal
Slept badly: the neighbour's dog. There was dust sheets over the furniture. I draped a shawl over the bureau glass before sitting down. Pure habit.
Read the Gazette properly this evening, at last. Nothing in it that touched on any of this. A relief, of a kind. The only thing I cut out was an advertisement for Seamen's Bethel.
Read the Gazette in bed, which I have been told not to do. Weather, the council, a wedding. Ordinary, and I was glad of it. An advertisement for Wanted: "Night watchman for Water Street warehouse. Steady man.
Long day. The salt marshes at low tide have an unseemly depth to them. Fish at Kellerman's. It was Friday; it's always fish.
Patched the soles of my winter boots with harness leather. The church bell struck four. The whole time, glasses. The sound of oar-locks in the fog is singularly dreary.
Four rounds between midnight and dawn. Found a stray tomcat dead by the water-butt. The carbolic smell off the butcher's apron gave me a start, foolish as it is. No two ways about it.