#supernaturalnoir: TALES OF SUPERNATURAL NOIR BY PAUL D. BRAZILL
TALES OF SUPERNATURAL NOIR
BY PAUL D. BRAZILL
‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
THE LIBERATOR
CHAPTER ONE
Weather the storm, they say. Let the dust settle. Bide your time. Wait. But what if that storm never stops raging? What then?
Even if you cut off one of the Hydra’s heads, another grows back. It is, as Simon Bolivar once said, like trying to reap the ocean. But still I slice. Still I reap.
*
Just like that, it all goes black. Just like that. From the moment they throw me into the cell and slam the metal door, I fall into the abyss. Into the pit of my own darkness.
When I awake, the sounds outside seem louder. The howls and the cruel laughter. The animal grunts and the whip cracks reverberate through me. I taste salty blood and a cold sweat acupunctures my pores.
After a moment, I start to steady my breathing. To take control.
Somewhere in that void, I see a speck of light. High up, where the ceiling must be. Looking like a lonely star in a godless galaxy. Or the Star of Bethlehem. Or maybe a star to guide a lost voyager to safety. Home.
If only.
I reach up to the light - stretching, stretching - but it’s too far away. Sweat snakes its way down my neck. My chest burns. I edge my way around the room until I bang my shins on the bench that I saw when they threw me into the cell.
It screams against the concrete floor as I drag it toward that final pin-prick of hope. I climb on the bench. Reach up and jab a finger in the hole. Plaster crumbles. Just a little. But it’s a start.
I dig with my fingernail and it gives way a little more. But not enough.
And I know don’t have much time.
I know that there’s nothing in my pockets that I can use. Everything was taken from me. And not just material things.
There are no tools in the room. Apart from the bench, I saw that it was empty when they threw me in. There is nothing to help me.
I gasp. Acid rises from my stomach.
Think. Think.
I grasp my crucifix. Take it off and use it to dig away at the plaster.
Something slams against the door and I stop for a beat. Then I attack the hole more furiously.
I will get out, I will escape. This I know.
And hours later, I am free. I drag my aching body through the tight gap I’ve made and out into the cold night air. I crawl along the flat, damp roof top and jump to the grass below.
The inky black night smothers me as, gasping, I crawl toward the forest, leaving behind a trail of blood. A dog barks somewhere in front of me. There are shouts behind me. Then gunshots. I suppress a scream as I’m hit in the leg.
A shadow appears from between the trees. A shard of moonlight picks out an oak of a man. He walks toward me, a growling, one-eared Rottweiler trailing behind him. The behemoth crouches and grasps my arms.
‘You took your time, Father,’ says Renato, a grin slicing his craggy face. ‘I told you it was better to leave the recon missions to me.’
He helps me to my feet.
‘Let’s get moving. Molotov is getting peckish.’ He nods toward the big, black dog who howls like a wolf.
I start to speak but everything fades to black.
CHAPTER TWO
Molotov’s snoring is like the roar of a Kalashnikov and drags me from a dank and fitful sleep. The small hotel room is dim in the wan light of dawn. Molotov blocks the door to the room, sleeping with one eye open. I am fully clothed on an unmade bed. Renato is in the next bed, in a deep sleep.
I shuffle off the bed and drag my weary body into the bathroom. I undress, first taking off my blood-stained clerical collar, then the torn rabbat. I gaze at the ravaged face in the bathroom mirror. The blue eyes are cold. My blond hair is long and lank. My face unshaven.
I undress fully and take a cold shower. I pull on a dressing gown and head back into the bedroom. Renato and Molotov are still sleeping. I ease back onto my bed and try to ignore the pain in my leg. I take a tablet and wash it down with a bottle of water.
There is a battered, red leather-bound Bible on my bedside table. I pick it up, switch on the bedside lamp and glance through it. The pages of the Bible have been torn out. Discarded. Replaced with sheets of parchment that are covered with red ink. My diary, of sorts.
I’d started writing it shortly after my sister Sophie was snared by The Duke’s men, The Cabal. Renato had suggested it as a way of helping me collect my thoughts. A type of catharsis, he said.
Now I use it as a sort of war journal. A record of something much more cathartic than mere writing. I switch off the lamp, close the Bible and place it on my chest. I close my eyes and let the sea of sleep enfold me. And then the nightmares begin.
CHAPTER THREE
A heavy autumn rain rips through the evening sky as we walk down Waterloo Road, towards a small gaudily painted flower stall, our black umbrellas flapping in the wind like fleeing crows.
The stall’s owner is a giant of a man with a face so red that it looks as if it’s about to explode any minute. Renato’s father, Gregor is a fearsome sight, to be sure. He had hitchhiked to England from Slovenia as a teenager and made his way around the country surviving as best he could until he eventually became one of London’s most feared enforcers; a ferocious mercenary who was employed by the most powerful villains in the city- the Kray Twins, the Richardson Gang, and other gangsters that were less well known but just as violent.
And then, at some point in the ‘80s, Gregor had been recruited by The Duke, the head of an international criminal organisation with connections to the rich and powerful. The Cabal. The work was standard fare for him at first – breaking bones had become second nature.
Until one stormy autumn night when he was picked up from his home in a black limousine and taken to The Duke’s mansion to meet a representative of the British Prime Minister. Gregor was ostensibly to be employed to execute a troublesome newspaper magnate. Not a difficult activity for Gregor but the sights Gregor saw while there he saw chilled him. The woman that many in the country worshiped was feasting on the living, filled with bloodlust. Crazed with hate.
Gregor ran from the mansion and spent that night and the next few days in an alcoholic oblivion, trying to wash away the terrifying sights he had seen. Eventually, in the early hours of the morning, he found his way to my church, St Martin’s. He begged to give confession and I acquiesced. The worlds stumbled out of him like a pack of drunks at closing time. I, like many, had heard rumours of The Duke and The Cabal. That he was some sort of supernatural creature. Centuries old. Of course, I did not believe them to be true. I put them down as urban legends. But when Sophie went missing I quickly had my eyes opened to the darkness that lay beneath the surface of our world. On the edges of our nightmares.
Gregor locks his day’s takings into a leather money belt. Friday evenings are usually busy for him, men from the nearby offices, filled with guilt and alcohol, buy flowers for their neglected wives and girlfriends. It looks as if it has been another good day.
I wait outside a kebab shop with a slavering Molotov as Renato moves toward his father. The old man grins as he sees his only son for the first time in months. They hug and speak quietly in Slovenian and then Gregor nods toward me. Gregor locks up his stall and we follow him down The Cut, past the trendy bars and restaurants that are full of people celebrating the end of the working week. A group of drunken middle-aged men in Manchester United football shirts stagger out of a Thai restaurant shouting racial abuse at an angry looking chef who follows them out holding a machete. One of them staggers into Gregor who pushes him away disinterestedly. Molotov growls and the men laugh as one of them falls into a puddle.
There are shouts behind us as we step into an alleyway and follow a trail of multi-coloured candles to a dark and dingy pub that looks as if it has seen better days and nights - The Golden Fleece. I push open the graffiti stained door. As usual, it takes a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the strange lighting in The Golden Fleece. Multi-coloured lanterns adorn the bar area and the pub’s few tables are lit up by large coloured candles that have melted into strange sculptures. The rest of the pub is in pitch black darkness.
‘What’ll I get you, lads,’ says Niall, a wiry Irishman who never seems to look you in the eye.
‘Two pints of stout for my friends and a green tea for me,’ I say.
‘And the usual for him?’ says Niall, nodding toward Molotov.
‘I suppose so.’
Niall pours a half pint of cider into an ashtray and puts it on the floor. Molotov slurps it down, farts and goes to sleep.
Niall gives us our drinks and we prop up the bar, in a darkened corner of the room.
Niall shuffles over to the other side of the bar to chat with Magda - a tall, overly made-up blonde in a fake leopard-skin coat. I had known her when she was Marek, a deserter from the Polish army in the days of National Service.
Gregor takes a grubby brown envelope from the inside pocket of his black leather jacket and hands it to me.
‘This is as much as I could get at such short notice,’ he says.
He takes a sip from his pint of stout and wipes the froth from his top lip. All the while he keeps his eyes on me. I open the envelope. There are two gold invitations and a photograph.
‘Quentin Lawrence?’ says Renato. ‘The industrialist? He owns the airline that went … boom?’
‘The self-same,’ I say. ‘If anyone can get me to Sophie, he can. He’s deep in with The Cabal.’
I put the envelope into my jacket pocket.
‘Are you ready?’ says Gregor.
‘I always am.’
I finish my tea as the doors to the pub burst open. The same bunch of drunken thugs that we’d encountered earlier stagger in, bringing a raging storm in with them.
‘What a fucking shithole,’ shouts a short, round skinhead.
‘I hope it’s cheap,’ says the stumpy one who had fallen in the puddle.
Magda, the woman in the leopard skin comes back from the toilets.
‘It’s got pussy, anyway,’ says the skinhead; he grabs Magda around the waist.
‘Fancy a dance, pet,’ he says, and drags her around the room to the amusement of his mates.
Magda grins and head-butts him. His nose bursts open and he screams like a slaughtered pig. She twirls away from him and bows.
A couple of the other thugs rush towards her. I step out of the darkness and slam one of them in the Adams apple with my fist and then kick him in the groin. Renato head-butts another. Gregor punches another and sends him sprawling into the bar. Molotov opens both eyes, growls and goes back to sleep.
By the time Niall comes from behind the bar, holding a baseball bat, the men are either unconscious or groaning with pain.
CHAPTER FOUR
Quentin Lawrence’s screams meld with the sound of a siren and drag me out of my trance. The crimson mist that fills my eyes fades away. The dark memories pop and fizzle like champagne.
Clarity.
Lawrence’s left arm swings loose like a limp dick. He pulls it close to his fat stomach like child hugging a teddy bear. He repulses me. I spit on the ground and it sizzles and disappears on the hot concrete.
I am on the roof of the Trellick Tower, a thirty-one-story, high rise block of flats built in the seventies, slap bang in the centre of London, by a Hungarian called Erno Goldfinger. The architectural style is apparently known as brutalist, which is quite apt since the building is a monstrosity.
A monstrosity, however, that is now a listed building, with its apartments selling for a fortune. But a monster is always a monster to me.
Still, it has a fantastic view across the great city. As the scorching August dawn breaks, shards of sunlight ricochet from the tower blocks’ windows. Black birds dot the sky. A helicopter skirts the horizon.
I haul Lawrence out of sight and into the plant room. I close the door and slam him against the pipes, ignoring his whining. I handcuff his good arm.
‘Well?’ I say. ‘Have you made your decision?’
The electricity generators hum and Lawrence’s screams have faded into sobs. They’d be pitiful, if I could have pity for a venomous snake like him.
‘Well?’ I bark.
He vomits over his expensive, silk shirt and looks down. He closes his eyes. Defeated so quickly.
Lawrence is a billionaire. A businessman. An importer and exporter of rare and exotic goods. Supply and demand. He has recently exported something that I want. Something valuable. Priceless. My sister.
I had given him a choice of how to die.
I told him that I could break every bone in his body slowly or he could tell me the whereabouts of The Duke’s new mansion and I will simply shoot him. End it. He laughed in my face. And then the crimson mist enfolded me.
I lean down and grip one of his hands. Two finger snap. The sound echoes around the room. He screams again before passing out.
My backpack feels heavy. I place it on the ground and take out my thermos flask. I sit down and drink. The sweet tea soothes me. Calm washes over me. I grasp a crucifix against my palm and wait.
The morning slithers towards afternoon. The day grows hotter still. I take off my clerical collar, loosen my rabbat and use the sleeve to wipe the sweat on my scarred neck.
Lawrence awakes. He looks at me and slowly nods.
‘Okay,’ he croaks. ‘You win.’
He almost chokes as he gives me the address that I need. I take a bottle of whisky from my backpack and hand it so him. He drinks and drinks until he vomits all over his expensive shirt. He looks up, a mixture of anger and resignation in his eyes. I smile as I take out my Glock and blow his brains to pieces. Feel the calm after the storm.
*
The milky moon washes the colour out of The Duke’s landscaped garden. I crawl across the lawn, past the trees and the topiary, toward the French windows. Slowly. Methodically. Until I’m close enough to see them.
Beautiful, haunting music plays. Ennio Morricone’s Chai Mai. The cameraman’s high pitched laugh slices the melancholy strings. A feminine laugh to come from such a large man, I think. And he is a beast. A giant wearing only a chauffeur’s cap and an eye patch. His naked body latticed with scars and tattoos.
He laughs again as The Duchess, dressed head to toe in black leather, dances toward the naked young man that is bent over the grand piano, and slices her red fingernails down his back, drawing blood. The man makes no sound but his body trembles as she licks his cuts with a long, scarlet tongue.
The Duchess walks toward The Duke, who sits in a red leather armchair smoking a large cigar. He blows a trio of smoke rings that float above him like halos.
In his other hand is a large brandy glass. A maid kneels beside him, her head resting in his lap. The Duchess crouches beside the maid, moves up close to her. Nuzzling her.
A dog barks, somewhere behind me. It’s time to move.
The hail of bullets shatter the glass and I’m inside within seconds. A gun in one hand, a knife in the other. The cameraman throws himself at me, the camera smashing to the ground, but I twist my hip, easily avoiding him, and trip him so that he smashes, headfirst into the grand piano.
One shot from my Glock, into the back of his head. One down. More to go.
Then I recoil as The Duchess flails me with a cat of nine tails. I ignore the pain, rush her and stab. A dagger under her ribcage and into her heart. I twist the blade. Two down.
I tense for more attacks. Turn toward the armchair. The Duke and the maid haven’t moved.
I turn toward the French windows. Renato stands amongst the broken glass. Molotov sits patiently beside him. Renato raises his hand in a salute. The all clear sign.
I turn back toward The Duke, who smirks at me, his black eyes shining.
‘I have been waiting for you, Father Trent,’ he says. ‘Waiting for centuries, it seems.’
‘Your wait is over,’ I say.
‘Indeed,’ says the Duke. ‘What is existence, after all, but procrastination? Especially my kind of existence.’
‘Like I said. It’s over.’
I raise my gun and fire. One silver bullet in the forehead. Three down.
I take the maid by the hair and lift her head so that I can look into her eyes. Dead, dark, soulless eyes. Just like The Duke’s. Just like the rest of his vile kind. The bite marks on her neck tell me all that I need to know. She has been taken. She has gone. My eyes well up with tears.
I take the silver bladed dagger and slam it into my vampire sister’s heart. And I liberate her.
STAMP OF A VAMP
Alison Day was a mousy woman who had barely been scuffed by the wear and tear of life until the day she met Lulu, the effect of which was like lightning hitting a plane. The Autumn night draped itself over the city, and the moon bit into the sky as Alison rushed home from her usual Wednesday evening yoga class. She felt edgy and fumbled for her keys as she heard the click, click, click of high heels on the wet pavement. She turned. On the corner of the street, beneath a blinking street lamp, a woman was smoking a cigarette. Her silhouette seemed to appear and disappear like warm breath on a cold window pane.
The woman was tall and, like Alison, in her early thirties with wan looking skin, a slash of red lipstick across her full lips and her black hair cut into a Louise Brooks bob. She was wearing a red PVC raincoat and shiny black stiletto heels and Alison suddenly felt very dowdy with her green cagoule, Gap jeans and mousy, unkempt hair.
The woman slowly sauntered towards Alison-and in a muddy foreign accent, said:
‘Keep looking at people like that and you’ll be in for a good tongue lashing.’
And then she collapsed in heap at Alison’s’ feet.
*
‘Would you like a cup of tea?” said Alison, “I have ...’ ‘Something stronger, maybe?’ purred the woman as she sat up from the sofa. Alison rummaged in a cupboard and found an unopened bottle of absinthe. ‘How about this?’ she said. The woman smiled and lit a Gauloises cigarette. ‘My name is Lulu,’ she said, filling two shot glasses with absinthe. ‘Drink with me, eh?’ As the night hurtled on, Alison got drunk and in the process told Lulu her life story, such as it was. Lulu seemed fascinated by Alison's idyllic, picture postcard childhood in Yorkshire and her job at Bermondsey Library. Lulu revealed little about herself, however, except that she had come from Bucharest shortly before the revolution and that she was married to a nightclub owner called Nicholas.
‘You know,’ said Alison ‘I hardly ever drink. My friends say that I can get drunk on the sniff of a barmaids apron.’ She giggled.
‘This is the first time I’ve drunk absinthe.’
‘Makes the heart grow fonder,’ said Lulu, licking the rim of the glass and holding Alison's gaze.
At some point during the night Alison woke up in bed, in a cold sweat, with no recollection of getting there. Lulu, naked, was smoking and gazing out of the bedroom window. The tip of her cigarette glowed bright red and then faded to black.
*
In the morning, as slivers of sun sliced through the blinds, Alison awoke and saw that Lulu was gone. Memories of the night before fizzed like champagne bubbles as, on the bed, she saw a business card for Vamps Gentleman's Club in Shoreditch. Written in red lipstick, was a phone number.
*
Vamps was suffocating in black leather and red velvet. It was cluttered with noisy groups of brash City Boys and semi-naked young women who wandered around with beer glasses full of money. The DJ played ‘Goldfinger’ as a statuesque blond, wearing only a pair of angels’ wings, crawled up and down a glistening pole.
Alison sat on a large black sofa next to Lulu, who was dressed in a red leather nun’s habit with a gold pentagram dangling from a chain around her neck. Tearing the label from her beer bottle she moved in close to hear Lulu speak.
‘I suppose marriage to Nicholas was a marriage of convenience.’ Lulu said. ‘I wanted to stay legally in England and he wanted...well, a pet. He promised me a job in a West End nightclub and I ended up here. But the worse thing is, he makes me have sex with other dancers. His business partners.’
She downed her drink in one.
‘Can’t you leave him?’ said Alison, red faced.
‘If I leave him, I’ll be deported and that will be that’, she said. Alison blanched.
As Autumn trudged on into Winter, Alison and Lulu’s meetings became more frequent and murderous thoughts hovered over them like a hawk ready to strike its prey until one cold night Lulu eventually said, ‘Okay. Let’s kill him.’
*
‘You see, ninety nine percent of the human race are just here to make up the numbers,’ said Nicholas, in a voice stained with nicotine and brimmed with brandy. He was an elegant, handsome man in his sixties. He indifferently smoked a large cigar, the smoke rings floating above his head like a halo or a crown of thorns.
‘They’re just cannon fodder. Don’t you agree?’
Alison couldn't agree or disagree. She couldn’t say a thing and she couldn’t move.
The plan had been simple enough. She was to go to Vamps on New Years Eve and ask about work as dancer. When the place closed she’d accept Nicholas’s inevitable invitation to go to his office for a night cap with him and Lulu. They were to poison him and dump his body in the Thames along with the drunks who tottered into the river’s dank and dirty water at this time of year.
But after the first couple of drinks she realised that she was paralysed. In the oak and leather armchair she was like an insect trapped in amber. The clock struck twelve and the room was lit up by exploding fireworks. Lulu and Nicholas’ eyes glowed bright red and then faded to black.
‘Happy New Year, my sweet,’ said Lulu. ‘I hope you like your present.’
‘I’m sure I will, darling ‘, said Nicholas, ‘I know how difficult it is to find fresh meat in these decadent times’. He chuckled and seemed to float from his chair.
As Nicholas sank his fangs deep into her neck, Alison felt pain greater than she had ever felt before. She wanted to cry, to scream, to tear herself apart but she could do nothing except listen to the sound of fireworks and Lulu’s cruel, cruel laughter.
DRUNK ON THE MOON
It’s happened to most people at one time or another. Maybe after a birthday party or a fight with your wife. You wake up throbbing with gloom and aching with guilt. Memories of the previous night trample all over your thoughts with dirty feet. Nausea curdles away inside you. Your mouth’s like the bottom of a birdcage and Keith Moon is playing a drum solo in your head. You peel back your eyelids and shards of sunlight slice through the blinds. Your bedroom looks as if it’s been redecorated by blind winos.
You stagger to your feet and stumble into the migraine-bright bathroom to puke. You’re sweating, shaking, and pins and needles acupuncture your body. Your clothes are torn and covered in blood. And then the waves of dark memories come flooding back like a tsunami.
Like I say, it happens to most people every now and again. But to me it happens with regularity, every month. Three times a month, to be precise.
And it happened again last night.
***
The oil slick of night was melting into a granite grey day and dark, malignant clouds were spreading themselves across the morning sky as a battered yellow taxi with blacked-out windows spluttered to a halt in front of my apartment block. I pushed past an over-dressed Russian woman, who rushed towards it. She struggled to control a big, black umbrella, which fluttered and flapped like a big black bat trying to escape from her grip. Ignoring her protests, I grabbed the handle and opened the door.
I shuffled into the back seat of the cab as Duffy, the driver, blew his nose on a Santa Claus napkin and threw it out of the window. Duffy’s face was so acne-scarred it looked like a chewed-up toffee apple and his spidery quiff was dyed black as ink. Not what you’d call a sight for sore eyes, then.
“Shitty, morning, eh, Roman?” said Duffy.
“I’ve had better,” I said, slumping against the car door.
Duffy struck a match on the “No Smoking” sign and lit up a Cuban cigar. He stuffed it in his mouth and hummed along to Mel Torme’s Gloomy Sunday.
“The Velvet Fog,” said Duffy, raising his bushy eyebrows.
I said nothing.
“Torme. His nickname used to be ‘The Velvet Fog’.”
I ignored him and stared out of the window as he started up the car and ran a red light.
At this time of day, the streets were littered with the dregs of society. Bottom feeders. Lowlifes. The city was full of them these days.
“Twilight time,” said Duffy; his face was sweating, despite the fact that the cab was as cold as the grave.
“That’s what we used to call this time of day, ‘twilight time’. You know, like the song?”
And then he was silent again, apart from his teeth grinding and the clicking sound that his jaw made.
The taxi snaked its way along the seafront, past pubs, greasy spoons, sex shops and kebab shops, before stuttering to a full stop outside Duffy’s Bar. The rain fell down in sheets and the fading street lights shimmered, reflected in the taxi’s windscreen. Duffy got out, pulled up the metal shutters and opened up the bar.
As Duffy shuffled through the door, he switched on the lights and the Wurlitzer jukebox burst to life. Howling Wolf snarled out “I Ain’t Superstitious,” as I nestled on my usual bar stool, calmly contemplating the two fingers of Dark Valentine that Duffy had immediately placed in front of me. The ice cubes seemed to shimmer, glimmer and glow in the wan light. ‘Twilight time’, indeed.
I briefly turned my gaze outside. The wet pavement reflected Duffy’s Bar’s flickering neon sign. Headlights cut through the heavy rain. A gangling scarecrow rushed past the window and burst through the door.
Tall, and with long black hair, Detective Ivan Walker flew in out of the storm like a murder of crows, bringing rain and a waft of golden leaves behind him. He wore a tattered long black raincoat which flapped in the breeze.
He took the stool next to me and put his badge and his Colt Anaconda on the bar. Duffy poured him a death black espresso.
“‘Twilight time’ again, Roman,” rasped Walker, in a voice like broken glass.
“So, I heard,” I said.
Howlin’ Wolf ended and was replaced by Dusty Springfield.
“The White Negress,” said Duffy, looking up from his National Geographic. “That was her nickname. It wasn’t racist, though.”
He was a mine of information, he really was.
I took in Walker’s appearance. His face – almost angelic – was latticed with scars. On the side of his neck was a burn mark shaped like a pentangle. My hands were shaking and I slurped my whisky with all the enthusiasm of an ex-con in a bordello.
“Hair of the dog that bit you?” said Walker, as I poured myself another drink.
It was a tired old line, but not as tired as I felt. But then, two nights on the prowl will do that to you.
“You’re a funny man, Walker,” I said. “As funny as leprosy.”
“Tough couple of days, then?”
I shrugged.
“It’s a dog’s life, eh?”
I ignored him, closed my eyes, and let the booze wash over me.
“Did you boys hear about the murders last night?” Walker said, stretching his long arms and yawning.
“Can’t say I did,” said Duffy.
“Really?” said Walker. “It’s been all over the news.”
“Don’t follow the news,” said Duffy. “Depressing.”
“Oh, this is a good one, though. A couple of Ton Ton Philippe’s boys were sliced up and ripped to pieces outside The Pink Pussy Club. Blood and guts all over the place.”
Duffy and I ignored him but I knew Walker well enough to know that he wasn’t just here to chat.
“And?” I said, eyes still closed.
“Oh, no great loss to the world. Don’t get me wrong, these boys were scum. They work for that Haitian lunatic, for Christ’s sake. I mean, good riddance to them and a round of applause to whoever did it. Yeah, but we’ve still got to go through the motions and try to track down who did do it. Not that we have much to go on, although it looked to me like they were ripped apart by a pack of dogs. Maybe the even same ones that took out Ice-Pick Mick McKinley last month.”
“Ah.”
“However…”
I heard him rummage his pocket.
“We did get one possible lead. We found this in the remains of one of the chewed-up hands that had been severed and hurled across the alley.”
I heard the metal scrape across the top of the bar and I knew what it was.
I opened my eyes.
Next to my whisky was a blood splattered badge. My detective’s badge.
“Let’s be careful out there, Officer Dalton,” said Walker, as he knocked back the coffee, patted me on the back and headed out of the bar.
“Bollocks,” said Duffy, drinking Dark Valentine straight from the bottle. “Ton Ton Philippe!” He shook his head. “You’re playing against the big boys now, Roman.”
As the White Negress sang, I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten, I did the very same thing. Only I made it up to one hundred.
***
The City’s brilliant neon cast dense shadows that tried to mask its sordid secrets, but a stench still permeated the alleyways, the gutters, and the bars. Of course, the stink overpowered some people, smothered them. But not me. I just took a deep breath and sucked it in. Inhaled it deeply.
I’d worked as a cop in The City for twenty years: robbery, vice, and homicide. But that all changed when I stumbled into what sounded like a typical drunken bar brawl and I ended up in the thick of something far, far from typical.
It was way past midnight and a full moon grasped the sky. I sat half-asleep in my car outside The Playhouse at the bottom of Banks’ Hill. I was on a stake-out looking out for Ice-Pick Mick McKinley, a rat-faced coke fiend who had told me that he had a wad of information on Ton Ton Philippe, the Haitian gangster whose control of The City was spreading like a cancer.
Suddenly, a sickly stew of screams and howls clung to the wind and drifted down to my car.
I got out of the car and slowly walked up the hill, my breath appearing in front of me like a spectre. The moonlight oozed across The City’s dank cobblestones like quicksilver, creeping between the cracks, crawling into the gutters.
As I got closer to Duffy’s Bar, I shivered, pulled my long black overcoat close to me, and carefully pushed open the large oak door.
Checking my pistol, I stepped into the bar.
The room was suffocating in red velvet and leather. Chandeliers hung from a mirrored ceiling and half-eaten corpses littered the concrete floor. And around them, feasting, were some sort of creatures – half-man, half-wolf.
Instinctively I fired off a round of bullets, but the creatures didn’t flinch. They just crawled towards me, snarling and growling.
Then I noticed Duffy on top of the oak bar, lighting a rag that he’d stuffed into a bottle of booze. He threw it at a Wurlitzer jukebox near the creatures and it exploded like a volcano.
The next few moments were a flash of fireworks and explosions. As the smoke subsided, the wolf creatures were in front of me. And then they pounced.
***
I awoke in an antiseptic stinking hospital, with Walker beside me eating grapes and playing Sudoku. He told me that after the explosion one of Duffy’s silver chandeliers had crashed down on my attackers, who had somehow struggled from under it and crawled away.
The corpses of three half-naked bikers were found in an alleyway by Walker and his boys the next morning. “Long-haired bearded weirdoes,” he said. “From out of town.”
Me? Well, they said I was lucky to be alive. “Ravaged” was the word they used. I was given long term sick leave to recover.
And so, I embraced my sick leave as well as most chronic workaholic cops and filled my days and nights watching reality television, eating junk food, and getting wasted on cheap whisky.
Until the end of the month, that is, when a full moon filled the autumn night like a big silver dollar. And then? Well, then, I just got drunk on the moon.
***
Days after the attack bled into weeks, which haemorrhaged into months, until the winter crept up and smothered the whisky-coloured autumn days with darkness. Night after night, Duffy’s flickering neon sign dragged me back like an umbilical cord. Or maybe a noose.
It was early one Sunday evening, the next full moon was a week away, and Duffy’s Bar was stuffed with ne’er-do-wells and ragamuffins in various states of inebriation. Duffy’s new Wurlitzer jukebox played an old Johnny Layton song and I was in my pots, watching a spectral spiral of smoke drift up from the ashtray towards the big silver star that hung above the bar all year round.
A gust of wind blew the door open and Duffy retreated to the shadows. Outside, a sharp sliver of moon garrotted the coal black sky. A tall woman, her long hair as black as a raven’s wings, drifted across the road, oblivious to the mob of traffic. Duffy licked his lips and his eyes glittered and glowed with each car’s near miss.
Almost as if on cue, the night was suddenly filled with the crackle of exploding fireworks and Daria almost floated into the bar, the throng parting for her. She stood before me looking like a long drink of water crying out to a thirsty man and a stiletto chill sliced through me. Her eyes glowed bright emerald green and then faded to black as she smiled, a slash of red lipstick across her full lips.
“Detective Dalton,” she said, in a voice as dark and thick as the smoke from a French cigarette.
“That’s ex-Detective Dalton,” I slurred. “I’m retired, now. A full-fledged member of the self-employed community.”
The words tripped over themselves as they tumbled out of my mouth. I handed Daria a business card. I had hundreds of them. Since Duffy convinced me to become a private eye, I’d had the grand total of one client.
“Can I get you a drink?” I said.
“The night is young, Detective Dalton,” she said, as she walked through the ace of spades archway and stepped up onto a small chiaroscuro-lit stage. “Even if you are not!”
She chuckled as two massive, bald men with bullet-hole eyes appeared out of the shadows and helped her with her long black raincoat. They moved a drum kit, a double bass, and an old RKO Radio microphone onto the stage as Daria languorously smoked a black cigarette.
I turned back toward Duffy, his head in a worn copy of National Geographic.
“How was last night?” I asked.
“The fancy dress party? It wasn’t exactly a flop,” said Duffy, without looking up from his magazine. “It was just that everyone came as a table and chairs.”
I smiled weakly, tried to think of a witty reply, gave up and lit another cigarette.
“Another DV?” said Duffy.
I shrugged and nodded at the same time. No mean feat, the state I was in. He poured me another drink and pulled the plug on the jukebox. I turned towards the stage as Daria’s laugh filled the room again. There was silence. And then she started to sing.
The sweat trickled down the back of my neck like an insect, as the drumsticks scuttled across the drums and the bass player’s fingers snaked down the fret board. I shivered as Daria whispered a torch song as if it was her dying breath and sparked the embers of a dream.
I quickly downed my drink, ordered another one and headed toward oblivion like dishwater down a plughole.
***
The winter moon hung fat and gibbous as I tore Long Tom Short’s head from his shoulders and hurled it across the snow-smothered ground. The splashes of blood looked black in the stark moonlight. A murder of crows scattered and sliced through the whiteness, as the purr of an approaching Mercedes grew to a roar and melded with my howls.
The black car screeched to a stop in a nearby alleyway, outside the former church that had been converted into The Pink Pussy nightclub. The driver got out, pointing a Colt Anaconda. Dressed in a long black overcoat and wearing a wide-brimmed hat, he looked like a shadow as he cut through the deserted car park. I growled as he approached, struggling, as always, to control my wolf-self.
“Down, Rover,” said Ivan Walker as he looked around at the six or seven dead bodies spread around the car park.
“You have been a busy boy tonight, Dalton,” he rasped, his voice like sandpaper. “Ton Ton Philippe will have to recruit a new crew if you keep wasting his boys like this. Either that or he’ll corpse you.”
He scratched the pentangle-shaped scar on his neck with the barrel of his gun.
Snow began to fall like confetti. Walker took Long Tom by the ankles and hauled the gargoyle’s massive corpse towards the dark and dingy alley, leaving a snaking trail of blood behind him. I sniffed the smell of death and my heart beat like a drum. My craving for flesh and blood increasing.
Walker pulled Long Tom Short up to the car, illuminated by the light from a stained-glass window, and opened the boot. He hauled the cadaver inside and slammed the lid shut.
I could almost taste the warm flesh. The red splashes were spreading like a Rorschach test before my eyes. The bloodlust was no longer possible to control. I leapt toward Walker and gave a cavernous roar as he dropped to his knees, pointed the gun, and fired it straight into my heart.
I slammed into the back of the car and crumpled to the ground. Walker rose to his feet and stood over me, smoking a cigar, the smoke rings floating above his head like a halo or a crown of thorns. Behind him I saw the shape of a tall, dark-haired woman in the corner of the alleyway. Her eyes glowed emerald green and then faded to black.
And then the sea of sleep enfolded me.
***
Dark dreams lapped at the shore of my sleep until I awoke, drowning in sweat. My eyes adjusted to the light. The digital clock beside my bed said that it was midday. I was naked on my bed, the black sheets ripped to shreds, and I was dashed with cuts and bruises.
Above my heart were three small punctures. Walker was a crack shot and the darts, filled with traces of silver, were just enough to knock me out for the count without actually killing me.
I showered and dressed in black jeans and a black roll-neck sweater. It was cold and I sat at the Formica table near the rasping radiator, sipping strong black coffee and nibbling on a piece of burnt toast. I clicked on my Bakelite radio and listened to a George Jones song while I tried to read To Have and Have Not. It was no good. Once again, my concentration was shot to pieces. I pulled on my Doc Marten boots, picked up my overcoat and headed off to Duffy’s.
***
The thing is, I didn’t particularly care whether she was lying to me or telling me the truth, since most of what I’d told her had been dug up from some murky hinterland somewhere on the outskirts of honesty. It was like a hunt and it didn’t seem to matter who was the hunter and who was the game.
“So, will you do it?” said Daria, sipping her glass of absinthe. She leaned close to me so she could hear my reply. The Frog Boys were slamming coins into the jukebox, playing non-stop ’70s British punk rock far too loud, but I was in no condition to tell them to change their tune. The Frog Boys weren’t the understanding type.
If Ton Ton Philippe had one rival in The City, then Count Otto Rhino was that man. The Frog Boys were Rhino’s seemingly invincible front-line troops. All of them were well over six foot tall, with arms like tree trunks, and dressed in military fatigues.
“Well?” said Daria.
Her perfume was a poison that I couldn’t resist. I shrugged, knowing full well that I would dance to any tune she sang.
A glass shattered in the corner of the room. I ignored it.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, “I’ll just turn up at The Pink Pussy and grab your kid sister out of there. I’m sure Ton Ton Philippe won’t mind. I mean, Haitian voodoo priests are renowned for their easy-going manner. Especially the ones that run most of The City’s underworld.”
She grinned.
“And don’t forget his army of zombie henchmen,” she said, her eyes flashing crimson.
“Oh, yeah. Mustn’t forget them.”
“So? You’re in?”
“Maybe. It’ll cost you, though.”
“Oh, I can pay, Detective. I’m good for it.”
“Then I’m in,” I said. “Like Errol Flynn.”
Daria leaned back on her bar stool and smiled. “Another round of drinks,” she said to Duffy.
Duffy picked up a bottle of absinthe and placed it between us on the bar. Suddenly, the bar stool shook. Two or three of The Frog Boys were slam-dancing and singing – well, screaming – about being Cranked Up Really High. And they surely were. Just as Duffy poured our drinks, one of the behemoths splayed into me, spilling the violent green liquid across the bar.
I turned to him and glared.
“Asshole!” I yelled, without thinking.
“What did you call me?” said the giant.
Before I could answer he had me by the throat with one gigantic paw and was wrenching me off the bar stool with ease.
I was helpless. I could see Duffy’s fingers creeping towards the shotgun that was hidden under the bar, but before he could get near it, the jukebox stopped and there was silence. Then, the wisp of a melody. It was soft but it slowly grew louder. Daria was singing and patting the giant on his arm, her eyes glowing green.
“No, Duke,” she said.
Suddenly, he started to sob and dropped me back in my seat. Daria stroked his cheek.
“Go play nice, Duke,” she said.
“Yes, Miss Daria,” said the sniffling Duke. “Sorry.”
And he walked back to the rest of The Frog Boys who all sat around the table, heads in hands. The jukebox clicked back to life. Miles Davis played a warm melody. And no one complained.
***
The Pink Pussy was usually crammed full of the sort of people that give pond life a bad name. Politicians, senior police officers, lawyers, actors. The DJ, Fritz Neuman, was a gaunt, pallid man who looked as if he’d been dead for a decade and no one had bothered to tell him. Each night he played something with a pounding, deafening bass.
The dance floor would be cramped with hot and sweaty bodies. On the stage, partially clad young women slid around like spaghetti on an alcoholic’s plate.
But in the afternoons the place was half-empty. The flotsam and jetsam of life were scattered around the place, drinking, sleeping. I almost felt at home.
I sat at the bar and glanced at my watch. Like with so many things, the secret of tonight's success would be timing.
“Drink?” said the tattooed greaser behind the bar.
“Dark Valentine,” I said.
He grimaced.
“This isn’t no flop house,” he said.
“Bourbon, then,” I said.
I picked up my drink and headed toward a darkened corner. Toward Ton Ton Philippe.
Small, with a red Mohawk and an eyepatch, Philippe sat on a golden throne near the stage, a smirk crawling across his face. Snakes twisted around his arms, hissing violently. A teenage girl was curled up in his lap like a Persian cat.
“Detective Dalton,” he said, nodding.
I didn’t correct him. Maybe Ton Ton thinking I was still a cop would have its uses.
“What can I do for you?”
“Her,” I said, nodding toward the squirming little blonde. “I’m here to take her home.”
“Ah, I’m afraid this little, fresh piece of chicken is reserved for a special customer. And what the Lao want, the Lao get. You can purchase any number of exotic delights, but this one is reserved.”
I had no idea what the Lao was, but I was used to getting my way. There was a beat as we locked eyes and then I whipped out my gun.
“I’m not buying,” I said, “I’m taking.” And I pulled her towards me.
Philippe’s laugh echoed around the place. And then they appeared. Three of them. Behemoths. Torn and ragged flesh. Glassy eyes. Zombies? Maybe? It certainly seemed as if the rumours were true. But before I could contemplate this any further, they stepped toward me and I fell into a well of blackness.
***
Ton Ton Philippe’s office was warm. Stiflingly so. Claustrophobic. I was strapped to a metal chair, like an insect trapped in amber. A parrot screeched in the corner of the room.
“Now, what do we do with you?” said Philippe. “I think that eradicating an officer of the law may give me more problems than I need, but ...”
I was barely listening to him. Not stressed at all. I could feel the itch crawling across my flesh. It wouldn’t be long now. Outside the window, a milky moon filled the inky sky. I changed.
It was a blur of crimson. Of howls and screams.
The zombies were soon ripped to shreds, but Ton Ton Philippe was gone in a wisp of smoke. The girl was like a rag doll as I picked her up and smashed through the window into the bitter cold night air.
***
“Thanks, Detective,” said Daria. “You did a damned good job.”
We sat at a rickety table in a deserted Duffy’s. She had the blonde on her knee and I saw that they didn’t look a lot like sisters. Or kiss like sisters, either. I’d been taken for a ride. A one-way ticket on a runaway train. My flesh prickled. My bones ached. I didn’t even care.
Daria stood, a couple of The Frog Boys beside her.
“Back home to Daddy, sweetie,” she said to the blonde, who stumbled to her feet, a smirk on her face. They headed outside and got into a dark green stretch limo with a crest on the side. The crest of Count Otto Rhino.
I looked down at the cash filled envelope that Daria had given me. Stuffed with more green leaves than you’d find in a cabbage patch. I’d made some money. And an enemy of Ton Ton Philippe. Not a bad night’s work, all in all.
“DV?” said Duffy, tearing up a beer mat.
“Naw, today I need a kiss from la fée verte, the green fairy. Give me a shot of absinthe,” I said, as I walked toward the bar. “I’ve heard it makes the heart grow fonder.”
THE NEON BONEYARD
Detective Ivan Walker was dead on his feet and no amount of coffee could help, even the strong, death-black stuff that he usually drank. He switched off the espresso machine and took his cup over to the only table in the station canteen that was being used. Roman Dalton PI sat with his head in his hands, and he didn’t look much better than Walker. He looked up as his friend sat.
“You look like death cooled down,” said Dalton.
Walker grunted.
“So, how did it go,” rasped Walker. “How was your meeting with the legendary Sherlock Holmes and his… companion?”
“Well, for a start, he was looking pretty damned sprightly for a man who was supposed to have died over a quarter of a century ago. Dr Watson, too. They both looked a lot better than you do, anyway. Hot time in The City?” said Dalton.
“I tell you, this place is a mad house these days. It makes me nostalgic for the days when we only had Dragan and his mob to deal with. The days without zombies, witches, and werewolves. No offence,” said Walker.
“None taken. I hear you. Dragan and the boys were bad guys for sure but at least they mostly kept their shenanigans all amongst themselves.”
“Well, these news boys aren’t showing such discretion,” said Walker. “Especially that Haitian’s crew.”
He leaned close to his former partner.
“So, what exactly did Sherlock Holmes have to say about Ton Ton Philippe?” said Walker.
“Not much more than he told me on the phone. He said that he first encountered Philippe in London around fifty years ago and at the time the Haitian was running a gambling den and a bordello in Soho.”
“So, how old does that make Ton Ton? I mean, I’ve only ever caught an occasional glimpse of him going in and out of The Pink Pussy Club but he certainly looked much more likely to be in his thirties than his seventies,” said Walker.
“He certainly looked young enough when he had me strapped to a chair in his office that time,” said Dalton. “But Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson should both be about 150 by my reckoning but like I say they’re both in fine fettle.”
Walker drained his coffee.
“There certainly is some weird shit going down these days,” he said.
“Agreed. The City is turning into Disneyland on acid. More freaks than you can shake a stick at.”
“Says the werewolf private eye. So why is Holmes here, anyway? Is he following Philippe?”
“Something like that. Apparently, Philippe stole something valuable from him a while back. Holmes wouldn’t say what it is, but it seems like he’s been hunting the Haitian ever since.”
Walker got up and stretched. He walked around the room.
“So, what’s next? I admit that I feel more and more out of my depth here these days,” he said.
“Well, Holmes wants me to go with him to The Pink Pussy Club. To act as security against Philippe’s zombie henchmen,” said Dalton.
Walker snorted.
“He actually said that? He said zombies?” said Walker.
“Oh yes. And he was deadly serious,” said Dalton, shuffling in his pocket for his hip flask.
“And what’s the story with Count Otto Rhino these days? A few years ago, he was buying up the odd run-down places now it looks like he owns half The City.”
“You’ve got to speculate to accumulate,” said Dalton.
“You know, I don’t trust him or that sister of his. The witch.”
Dalton drained his coffee.
“Daria? She could turn me into a frog any day. And I think you’ll find she’s more of a Siren than a witch.”
Walker sat back down.
“And that’s another thing,” said Walker. “What the hell are those Frog Boys that Otto Rhino keeps recruiting? They’re like speed-pumped mutants.”
“Yep, they’re a strange bunch for sure but I think we’ll be seeing stranger types than them in the future, the way things are going.”
Dalton closed his eyes and whistled a Jim Morrison song. When he opened them, Walker was gone.
*
Sherlock Holmes gazed at his reflection in the hotel bedroom’s mirror, still pleasantly surprised by how well he looked, considering he was 152 years old. He had first taken Bimini when he was in Hong Kong in the 1920s. He’d bought a bottle of it from a cohort of Dr Fu Manchu, the retired crime kingpin that had once ruled most of East London’s Limehouse district. Holmes had then taken to regularly imbibing the elixir, which was said to have originally come from the legendary fountain of youth. He had even built up a good supply which he had kept locked away in Howard Hughes’ Las Vegas penthouse apartment, taking only occasional sips for fear of draining his source of eternal life. He took out his hip flask and took a nip of the potion.
“Best get a move on,” he said, still checking his reflection.
“Okay,” said Dr Watson, yawning.
Watson got out of the bed and walked into the bathroom.
“Two ticks,” he shouted, before switching on the shower.
Holmes placed one Derringer in its wrist strap and checked the other one in his ankle holster. He picked up a walking cane with a death’s head handle. He clicked it to make sure the silver sword was still functioning. He knew that he would need all of his resources if he was to survive a battle with Ton Ton Philippe and his zombie horde.
Satisfied, he sat down in the red leather armchair and lit up a Gitanes. A foul habit, he knew, and one that he had kicked many times before, but the thought of being so close to retrieving the Rara Avis was consuming him, and he needed to calm his nerves. This could be his final curtain call, he knew.
“That fag smells foul,” said Dr Watson as he stepped naked out of the bathroom.
“Yes, it does, rather,” said Holmes, examining the cigarette, curiously. He sniffed it but it smelt normal. The aroma was being emitted by something else.
He locked eyes with Watson.
“Brimstone,” said the doctor. His eyes scoured the room.
Holmes nodded.
There was loud bang and an explosion filled the room with smoke. When it cleared, Ton Ton Philippe stood there grinning. He was a handsome man with a red Mohican hairstyle and eye patch. He was bare-chested, wearing a red leather suit. Tattoos and scars latticed his body. Snakes writhed around his arms. Two massive, black-clad zombies stood beside him.
“The great detective,” hissed Philippe. “As I expected.”
“Long time no see, old chum,” said Holmes.
Dr Watson yawned and started to dress.
“Fancy a drink, Philippe?” he said.
Philippe walked over to the globe shaped drinks cabinet and opened it.
“I don’t think I see any Bimini here,” he said.
“No, just the domestic stuff. Dark Valentine,” said Holmes. He tapped his hip flask. “But I do have a shot or two of Bimini in here.”
Ton Ton Philippe’s eyes sparkled.
“Have you been using your supply sparingly?” he said. “Resisting temptation?”
“Of course! Moderation in all things,” said Holmes. “Looking at you however, I’d say you’ve been guzzling the stuff. Not much left? Down to the dregs?”
Philippe frowned.
“I assume you didn’t come all the way to The City just to gloat at me?” said Philippe. “To flaunt your fountains of youth.” He leaned against a bookcase, took out a snuff box from his back pocket and inhaled.
“Of course not. This is strictly a business matter. A barter. Just a straight exchange, Philippe. The elixir for the Raven,” said Dr Watson, now fully dressed in black jeans and a roll neck sweater.
“The Andalusian Raven is no use to you anyway. Its gifts you already possess,” said Holmes. He tapped his left eye. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have known we were here.”
“For sure,” said Philippe. “Although you were quite difficult to spot. But I’ve been saving the Raven just in case I ever needed to use it as a bargaining tool.”
“Well, it appears that now that time has finally come,” said Holmes.
“Maybe,” said Philippe. “I’ll have to think about it. How much of the Bimini would you be willing to set free from your clutches? Considering I’m an old… chum?”
“Mm. How about ten bottles?” said Dr Watson.
“Make it fifty and we may have a deal,” said Philippe. “Ten won’t last me long.”
Holmes slumped forward in his seat. He put out his cigarette and lit another.
“Oh, I do so loath haggling.” He sighed. “Is forty acceptable?”
Philippe smirked. “It’s a deal.”
Holmes held out his hand. Philippe took it and grinned. He winked and muttered a voodoo spell.
And then Holmes burst into flames. He was dust within seconds.
“Well, that turned out alright,” said Dr Watson. He coughed.
Philippe tittered. “Yes, it was easier than expected.”
“So?”
Philippe clicked a finger and one of his zombie henchmen walked over and put a small elaborately decorated egg- shaped box on the bed. Watson tapped it on the top and it opened in segments. Inside was a jewel encrusted raven with only one eye in the middle of its head.
“Does that suit you?” said Philippe.
“Oh yes,” said Dr Watson.
He bent down and pulled a silver briefcase from under the bed. He handed it to Ton Ton Philippe.
“Take small doses from time to time and that should keep you going for a while. At least until one of us can find a new supplier,” said Dr Watson.
“Where are you off to next?” said Philippe.
“Anywhere. Just out of this dump. I’m just relieved to be rid of that tiresome, pompous old fool,” said Watson, pointing to a pile of dust on the floor that used to be the world’s greatest detective.
*
The long black train silently snaked its way into The City’s Central Railway Station and Count Otto Rhino was reminded of the story of the funeral train that used to take The City’s plague victims out of the town. Apparently, there was even a special station just for this particular train. It had been called Necropolis Central Station if he remembered correctly.
Otto was a massive, overweight man in his mid-fifties with a bald head and a permanently furrowed brow. He was wearing an expensive black suit and overcoat. A large pair of black-framed sunglasses were a permanent fixture, worn inside as well as outside, whether it was sunny or not.
The lone passenger stepped off the train. He was wearing a dark overcoat and a Cossack hat. A black scarf was wrapped around his saggy face.
Igor, a wiry leather-clad man with a bushy white beard, excitedly rushed past Otto like a bitch on heat.
“Herr Doctor, Herr Doctor, it is so good to see you again,” said Igor, holding out a leather-gloved hand.
Doctor Victor Frankenstein ignored the hand and said nothing. He ignored Igor and walked toward Otto. He pulled down his scarf.
“Otto Rhino,” he said, in an accent sharp enough to cut diamonds. “An honour.” He clicked his heels.
“A pleasure Doctor,” said Otto. “I trust you and your… Monster had a comfortable journey from Geneva?”
“It was quite adequate, Count Otto. Which is the best that one can ask for these days, and at my time of life,” said Frankenstein.
A long black box was pulled from the train by two of Otto’s Frog Boy’s, Igor excitedly barking orders. Otto and Frankenstein walked to the waiting limousine and got in the back. The car was warm, John Coltrane playing through the speakers.
“Ready to go boss?” said Igor, as he squeezed into the driver’s seat. “Or are we waiting for someone else?”
“Let’s getting moving,” said Otto. “There’s a storm brewing.”
*
The roar was like that of a hundred lions. The sound of a hurricane. Of the world being ripped apart. Frankenstein’s Monster was strapped to the operating table, connected to some strange machinery. It struggled to escape its bonds, veins bulging on its shaven head.
Igor rushed though the laboratory with what looked like an adapted cattle prod and slammed it against The Monsters head. There was a flash of light, a fizzing sound and The Monster closed its eyes.
“It truly is a fearsome sight,” said Otto Rhino.
The laboratory had a green glow that only accentuated The Monsters scaly green skin.
“Indeed,” said Doctor Frankenstein. “But the creation of a superman is not a simple process and not without its teething troubles. The more aesthetic aspects of The Monster can be modified at a later date. I’ve already tinkered a little.”
“He looks a little familiar, actually,” said Otto.
“Yes, I based his appearance on that of the actor Dolph Lundgren.”
“And the swastika on the forehead?”
“Oh, that was already there. I left it. I felt it gave him an extra… oomph!”
“It’s striking,” said Otto.
“Speaking of which,” said Frankenstein.
He looked up at the stormy night sky through the skylight.
“Shall I open the skylight?” said Igor.
“Of course,” said Doctor Frankenstein.
Igor pulled a chain and the skylight slowly opened, filling the room with wind and rain. Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked.
“Are you sure this is necessary?” yelled Otto, lifting a black umbrella.
“I am always sure,” said Frankenstein. He flicked a switch as lightning flashed and struck The Monster. Otto was aghast, his mouth wide open and his umbrella was ripped from his hands by the wind.
The Monster opened its eyes. Smiled.
“Close the skylight,” said Frankenstein and Igor did as he was told.
Silence filled the room. Otto felt as if his heart had been ripped from his chest.
The Doctor walked over to The Monster and examined him with some strange sort of stethoscope.
“You are remarkably quiet,” said Frankenstein.
“I am… rebooting,” said The Monster. “It was a long sleep this time, I think.”
“Three months,” said The Doctor.
He put down his stethoscope.
“Thirsty? Hungry?”
He and Igor unstrapped The Monster.
“Of course,” he looked at Otto.
“Our host?”
“Yes, Count Otto Rhino. May I introduce you to… actually, what are we going to call you now?” said Frankenstein.
The Monster slowly sat. Eased himself off the operating table. Yawned.
“How about…Adam,” said Otto. “You know, the first man and all that.”
“Well?” said Frankenstein.
“Not bad,” said The Monster. Igor handed him a black suit and white shirt. He dressed stiffly. “But I think I’d prefer something more dramatic.”
“Such as?” said Frankenstein.
“Such as… Victor Frankenstein,” said The Monster. “That has a nice ring to it.”
At which point, he ripped Doctor Victor Frankenstein’s head clean off.
“Oh dear,” said Count Otto Rhino. “That is most unfortunate.” He was holding a glass of brandy, swaying a little.
“Do you have a problem, Otto?” said The Monster.
He stood on an oak table in the shadowy living room, illuminated by a swinging chandelier. He held The Doctor’s head aloft, having just ripped it from his shoulders.
Igor cowered under the table.
“Er, well, no,” said Otto. “Not really. To be frank, Doctor Frankenstein was a little surplus to my requirements anyway since, it seems, his work on you is complete. But that was a tad shocking.”
“The time for freedom was upon me,” said The Monster. “For years I have danced to his tune. That, I think was the perfect moment to snap the puppet master’s strings.”
He hurled Frankenstein’s head out of an open window. “I have been waiting for far too long a time to do… that.”
He jumped off the table. Igor whimpered.
“Perhaps you would like to share with me some of the details of this great battle that you are preparing for?” said The Monster.
“Of course,” said Otto. “Let’s go to my office.”
The Monster looked around the room.
Otto sighed.
“It’s time to get down to business,” he said.
*
It was a bitter, cold dawn and seagulls screeched and flapped around maniacally as a fishing trawler adorned with fairy lights cut across the stormy, metallic sea. A sharp autumn wind sliced through Daria as she waited dockside with Count Otto Rhino. She wrapped the black leather coat tight around her muscular frame. Tied back her long black hair and put on a black Fedora. Her emerald, green eyes twinkled as she gazed up at the black clouds that looked like bullet holes in the granite sky. She frowned and turned to Otto.
“Couldn’t we have chosen another location, more civilised?” she said. “Maybe a nice warm bar or nightclub.”
“Still yearning for your nights singing at Klub Zodiak, are you dear? Are you missing Dragan, the mad, bad Serb?” said Otto Rhino, not looking at her, still gazing out to sea. “Maybe the Haitian can find an opening for you at The Pink Pussycat Club.”
Daria stuck out her tongue at him.
“Don’t you feel the cold at all?” she said. “It’s colder than your mother’s heart.”
Otto grimaced.
“She was your mother, too,” said Otto Rhino. “For better or for worse.”
He lit a cigarette with a scratched, silver Zippo lighter. Sucked it. Coughed. Offered the packet to Daria.
“I prefer my own, Otto,” she said. “You know that.”
She took out a long black cigarette from a silver cigarette case. Rhino lit it for her. The smoke trailed away like a spectre.
A black Zephyr Zodiac pulled up close to where they stood. Igor got out. He was wearing a black leather jacket and gloves and carrying a silver briefcase. He walked over to them, scowling as a gust of wind battered him. He shook hands with Otto and handed the briefcase to Daria.
“Any problems?” said Otto.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” said Igor.
He grinned and picked flecks of blood from his beard. “Is Dr Jekyll arriving in that?”
The trawler was getting closer.
“Indeed,” said Otto. “Hardly the standard he’s used to, I’m sure. But needs must. Discretion is all.”
“Do you have anything to restrain him in case he loses control? In case he’s been drinking his own potions?” said Igor. He patted the Glock in his shoulder holster. “If he has transformed this may not be enough. Mr Hyde’ reputation…”
“I have all the ammunition that I need,” said Otto, nodding toward Daria. “More than enough. Even for Mr Hyde.”
Igor smirked. “Music soothes the savage beast, eh?”
Daria turned and glared at him. “Breast, Igor. The savage breast.”
“Ah, I’ve never been very good with Shakespeare,” he said.
Otto chuckled. Patted Igor on the arm.
“William Congreve, Igor,” said Otto. “A common misconception. But on to more pressing matters…”
He pointed toward the trawler which was docking with a clang.
After a few minutes, a frail, elderly man got off the boat and shuffled toward them carrying a battered old suitcase. A Russian sailor walked behind him carrying a rifle.
“Count Otto Rhino, I presume,” said the old man in a soft Scottish accent. He held out a hand. Otto shook it.
“Dr Henry Jekyll, it is an honour to meet you,” said Otto. “I hope your passage wasn’t too uncomfortable.”
“Far from it,” said Jekyll. “Vodka is a great comforter.”
“I hope you’ll be able to get to work at once, Doctor,” said Otto. “My Frog Boys are invaluable but they do have their limitations.”
“Not a problem,” said Jekyll. He tapped his suitcase. “I have more than enough…”
The Russian moved forward and pointed his gun at Otto. Stepped in front of Jekyll.
“No talk. Money,” he said. “Now.”
“Charmed I’m sure,” said Otto. He nodded to Daria who handed over the briefcase.
The Russian crouched down and put it on the floor. Clicked it open. Its contents glowed. The Russian smirked. “It is good,” he said.
“Better than grubby old cash, eh?” said Daria.
The Russian was already walking back to the boat with the briefcase, the gun over his shoulder, whistling Swan Lake.
“Now?” said Igor, as the Russian got back on the boat.
“Let’s get a little further away,” said Otto. “Better safe than sorry.”
They all got into the Zephyr Zodiac, with Igor driving.
As the car pulled away from the docks, Otto took his Zippo from his pocket, clicked it open and the fishing trawler exploded, filling the sky with flames.
“I do like a bit of spring cleaning,” said Otto.
“It’s winter,” said Daria.
“A mere technicality, dear,” said Otto, as he watched the sky turn red.
*
Count Otto Rhino reclined on a black-leather chaise lounge wearing only a paisley silk dressing gown and his sunglasses. The sound of Gershwin’s An American in Paris filled the dimly lit library. He smoked a massive Cuban cigar, its smoke rings trailing toward a creaking ceiling fan like wraiths.
“You are being uncharacteristically anxious, my dear,” he said, stifling a yawn.
Daria sat in a wicker armchair, nursing a glass of Rosso Esperanto. She wore a long black evening gown. A Yin and Yang amulet hung loosely around her neck. Her lips and fingernails were blood red.
“Otto, you know as well as I do that it’s not normal for Carmilla to stay out for two nights in a row. Not without contacting one of us anyway,” she said.
“She can take care of herself,” said Otto. “You know that. If she encounters any pests, she can just sink her fangs into them. Or rip their heads off. She’s done it plenty of times before, after all.”
Daria rubbed the amulet.
“It’s just that I can’t sense her anywhere,” she said. “And that’s certainly never happened before.”
“Don’t you have any idea where she went?”
“Yes, I do and that’s part of the problem. She said she was going to go back to The Pink Pussy Club and take revenge on that damned Haitian but I thought she was joking. Now, I’m not so sure…”
“Well, there’s only way to find out. I can send a few of The Frog Boys down there for a bit of a blitzkrieg.”
Daria stood, poured herself a glass of brandy. Filled Otto’s glass.
“Mmm. A nice idea but that would probably spark an all-out war with Ton Ton Phillippe and we’re not full prepared yet. Are we?”
“No, no. Dr Jekyll will need a little more time, I’m sure. And The Monster or Frankenstein, or whatever he wants us to call him, is still not ready – he needs to rest. Do you have a solution?”
“Maybe. We can call the police?”
“Ha! A last resort. Let’s leave it a day or two and see if she turns up. Carmilla is as tough as nails, you know that,” said Otto.
“Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t fret. But you know that the Haitian has his… ways.”
“If the rumours are to be believed…”
“Of course you believe them, or you wouldn’t be calling in such… exceptional reinforcements,” said Daria.
Otto walked over to the window.
“Well, why not send in a neutral party to check things out?” he said.
“And who do you have in mind?”
Otto pointed at the ivory moon that filled the sky and howled.
*
Dr Henry Jekyll had felt the lure of the night for far too long. The penthouse apartment, luxurious though it may have been, seemed antiseptic: clean but claustrophobic. He needed to taste The City. Taste its sin. Its decadence. He showered, dressed in a brand-new suit that was three sizes too big for him and stood by the window, looking out at The City’s twinkling neon. He poured a toxic green liquid into a tall glass and downed it in one. It burned as it shuddered through him. His skin began to tingle. Sweat poured from him. He could barely breathe as he headed out of his apartment and took a shining gold lift down to Rhino Towers’ luxurious lobby. He nodded to the prune- faced night-watchman and burst through the front doors, the full moon hanging over him.
He stopped in the neon-soaked street to breath in the sultry air. He could smell the lust, sin, the decay. An old drunk collapsed at his feet, shattering a bottle of Dark Valentine. Jekyll stepped over him as he lay sobbing. A young blonde woman was bent over a dumpster, her red dress pulled up to her waist. Her screams of passion obviously fake as a hairy biker, his leather trousers around his ankles, silently rammed into her. A group of Hoodies waving broken bottles and baseball bats chased a fat, wheezing business man into a darkened alleyway.
Jekyll smiled, flexed his muscles. He could feel Mr Hyde crawling to the surface.
A battered Ferrari screeched to a halt in front of a 24-hour liquor store. Two skinheads rushed out. One went into the shop, the other into the alleyway, unzipping his fly.
Jekyll grinned, feeling stronger by the second. He whistled a Johnny Mercer tune as he walked into the alleyway.
At first, the smell almost overpowered him but then it invigorated Hyde and speeded the transformation. The alleyway was illuminated by the light from a stained glass window and he could see that the skinhead was bleeding on the ground, four or five Hoodies beating him with a variety of weapons even though he was clearly already dead to the world, if not actually dead. The other Hoodies were ripping the fat businessman limb from limb and feasting on his flesh. Jekyll licked his lips. He could almost taste the corpse. He muscles stretched, ballooned. His bones twisted and snapped. His skin ripped. It was an exquisite agony.
As one, the Hoodies glared at Mr Hyde. Their eyes were glowing red pinpricks. They stood and stalked toward him. Hyde guffawed. Fully transformed, he was massive, handsome with a cruel look in his eyes.
“Come to daddy,” he said, with a smirk.
The Hoodies attacked. Hyde ripped apart the first one with ease and worked his way through the rest within minutes.
“Thank… you,” gasped the flabby businessman who struggled across the floor, a trail of blood behind him, barely clinging onto life.
Hyde stepped toward him and grinned.
“No, thank you,” he said and he ripped the man’s heart from his chest and devoured it with one swallow.
*
The City was ablaze. Crimson and gold ripped through the night sky, sliced and skewered by black smoke.
“This reminds me of the last days of the war,” said Walker. He was on the roof of the Basilica, his gun in his hand, surveying the scene. The carnage. His long raincoat flapped in the breeze.
“The good old days, eh?” said Duffy.
“I try to forget them. Try being the operative word,” said Walker.
Duffy stood beside him armed with his AK 47. A loud thump and they turned to see Roman Dalton, completely transformed into a werewolf. Dalton howled.
“Fancy meeting you here,” said Duffy. He took out a hip flask filled with Dark Valentine. Took a swig and handed it to Walker who took a nip. Then he handed it to Dalton, who growled.
“Prefer something with more bite, eh?” said Duffy.
Dalton howled and beat his chest, his eyes glowing red.
“Are we ready to kick ass?” said Duffy.
“Why not,” said Walker. Dalton roared as he jumped down into The Pink Pussy Club’s car park. Walker and Duffy headed down the rattling fire escape.
*
Count Otto Rhino gazed out of the window of his penthouse apartment at Rhino Towers.
“The war has begun,” he said.
He turned to face Mr Hyde, The Monster, Carmilla, Daria and Igor.
“Ready?” he said.
“Let’s get this over with,” said Daria.
They all headed out of the apartment and into an elevator which took them to the building’s underground car park. A mob of Frog Boys waited for them.
*
A storm ripped the sky open and rain poured down in sheets. The Pink Pussy Club’s neon sign flashed and buzzed erratically. The sound of thrash metal emanated from inside the club.
A mob of zombies surrounded the entrance. Dalton, Duffy, and Walker walked toward the club as a car exploded behind them.
As lightning flashed, they rushed toward the zombies.
Dalton jumped on two and ripped their heads off with his paws and bit the head off another. Walker shot one in the head, spun as another grasped his arm and blew its brains out. Duffy fired, spraying wildly, and taking out a few of them. He reloaded and started shooting again.
More zombies rushed them as group of Frog Boys appeared and took on the zombies with baseball bats and samurai swords.
Mr Hyde and Frankenstein’s Monster appeared from black smoke and took on more, both laughing gleefully as they tore the zombies apart with ease.
Carmilla slipped through the front door of The Pink Pussy Club as Igor drove a burning police car at another group of zombies.
Inside, the club was dimly lit, lights flickering. Tom Waits’ ‘The Heart of Saturday’ night leaked from the speakers. Ton Ton Philippe sat on his throne smoking a cigar, looking weary.
“You have returned my pet,” he said, as he saw Carmilla. He sounded tired.
Carmilla grinned, ran onto the bar, somersaulted, and kicked him in the head.
Outside, the sound of Daria’s singing grew louder and then there was silence. Philippe was frozen where he lay.
Otto Rhino strolled into the room. He bent over and picked up the cigar that Philippe had dropped. He soaked a red velvet curtain with a bottle of Dark Valentine and then used the cigar to set it alight.
There was an explosion that shook the room and then Roman Dalton crashed through a skylight onto Philippe, tearing him to shreds. Carmilla leapt and sank her fangs into the Haitian. He crumbled to the ground.
Daria walked into the room and all was silent. Her green eyes glowed as she sang. Then Walker and Duffy followed her. The room was ablaze but Duffy walked behind the bar and picked up a bottle of Dark Valentine. He gulped down about a third of the stuff and handed the bottle to Walker who took a good swig.
Dalton had ripped Ton Ton Philippe to pieces and was howling as he waved the Haitian’s limbs about. The Monster and Mr Hyde leaned against the bar laughing maniacally.
“Why don’t we all head back to my joint for a bloody good booze up?” said Duffy.
“I think I shall take you up on that offer,” said Otto Rhino.
He turned to Daria.
“Is it safe for us to leave from the front entrance?” he said.
Daria nodded, took Dalton by the paw, and began to sing ‘I Put a Spell on You’ as she led him out of the burning building, the others trailing behind them.
FIN
© Paul D. Brazill.
PAUL D. BRAZILL IS AN ENGLISH PULP FICTION WRITER LIVING IN POLAND.