CLICK HERE FOR CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT: ENTER THE STIFF
"I think we can all agree," I said to the company assembled in chairs around my conference table-- child actor Matthew "Stymie" Beard, J. Alfred Prufrock, Patience and Prudence, and, in a dark corner of the room, Gregor Samsa, the giant verminous whatever-- "that something peculiar is going on."
I delivered a brief lecture to Stymie-- and Prufrock-- about the inadvisability of casually flinging around balloons filled with a potentially lethal substance. Then I laid out the facts as I knew them, as much for my own benefit as for anyone else's.
"First, my publicity man, or whatever the hell he is, Percival Doiley, comes to me with an idea for a stunt involving the fictional Doctor Reverso-- the villain in the recent Black Centipede movie. Reverso does not actually exist, but the actor who portrayed him, Mag DeMilby Junior, does. Percy summons DeMilby to Zenith.
"In Hollywood, Stymie Beard overhears a disturbing telephone conversation between DeMilby and some unknown party. My name is mentioned-- as a potential target for lethal violence. And another name is mentioned, which constitutes the most disturbing part: Doctor Almanac.
"Stymie, bravely and rashly, stows away aboard the train that brings DeMilby to Zenith. When he arrives, he phones me. I meet him at the depot. DeMilby has left, probably accompanied by Percy, and gone to a hotel. As Stymie and I make our exit, we run across a faceless Russian assassin named Anonymoushka. She recognizes me-- we've had dealings before-- and a brief scuffle ensues. I am not ashamed to admit that I'm getting the worst of it.
"Enter Patience and Prudence. They very quickly and efficiently subdue Anonymoushka, and we bring her here. She revives and goes slightly berserk, accusing me of being in league with the White Centipede in some scheme to bring the deplorable Doctor Almanac back from the dead.
"Which I am NOT," I added pointedly, driving the point home for Patience and Prudence, who had no love for Almanac.
"Anonymoushka," I continued my summation, "seems to be on the point of listening to-- and speaking-- reason, when she is rendered hors de combat by a balloon full of ether, flung at her head by Stymie, working in concert with Mister Prufrock. We won't discuss that any further, gentlemen. Fortunately, Anonymoushka survived the attack, but she is profoundly unconscious and likely to remain that way for some time.
"So there we are. It seems to me that what I know is currently dwarfed by what I do not know. I wish to right that imbalance."
I wanted to find out how Patience and Prudence came to be involved in this thing. I also wanted to know why Anonymoushka was here, and what the hell was going on with Doctor Almanac, the White Centipede, and whoever else might be waiting in the wings.
"Did you just happen along by chance at the train depot?" I asked the girls.
They shook their heads.
"Did the Stiff send you?"
They nodded.
"What's it all about?"
I don't know what kind of response I was expecting, since the girls do not speak, having been relieved of their tongues by the atrocious Almanac. I got one that I could not have foreseen.
They didn't move their heads at all this time. Patience held up her right hand, forefinger extended. Giving me her very best blank stare, she started moving the finger back and forth in a crisp, steady rhythm, like a metronome. Prudence had closed her eyes and sat motionless. Patience's lips were moving slightly, in time with her moving finger. After almost half a minute of this, her hand dropped back onto the table and Prudence opened her eyes.
The telephone on the conference table rang. I lifted the handset.
I knew who would be on the other end, and I was mildly surprised by the fact that I wasn't at all surprised.
"Bonjour, Monsieur Le Cadavre," I said into the receiver.
"Hello, William," came the voice of the Stiff.
I was one of only four living souls who knew that Zenith's overlord of organized crime had once been Jacob Russell Melchoir, rising young Assistant District Attorney. (Two of the others were sitting right in front of me.) Melchoir's promising career as a civic crusader had been snuffed out by Frenchy Donovan, a long-time Zenith mob boss who held a serious grudge. He had Melchoir beaten almost to death, placed in a metal barrel that was filled the rest of the way with formaldehyde, and dropped into Zenith Bay.
The thing is, Melchoir came back. Or something did. Woodrow Wilson Tannenbaum, better known as the lethal Voodoo gangster Baron Samedi, had summoned Melchoir's body back from the depths of Zenith Bay and his soul from... wherever. Neither item was in the same condition it had been in before Donovan's murderous attack. The two were reunited, and Melchoir was reanimated. Except he wasn't exactly Melchoir anymore. For one thing, he now looked like an ambulatory mummy. And the physical changes had not been the most profound ones.
He was now the Stiff. He and Samedi were the undisputed czars of Zenith's organized criminal underworld.
And he was one of a small handful of people who knew my real name. I had no idea how he had come by the information, nor did I wish to inquire too closely. I am fearless, but I'm not stupid.
"I assume you know why you're calling?" I said.
He laughed. It was cold and dry, with no merriment anywhere in it. The Stiff was, in my estimation, an amiable but dangerous man, absolutely bloodless and devoid of recognizable human emotion. Almost. The exceptions to that were Patience and Prudence, on whom he doted, and me. He seemed to regard me as a friend and even something of a confidant-- up to a point. I was careful not to step beyond that point.
His management style as far as his criminal operations were concerned had never placed him in my cross-hairs. I specialized in freaks and maniacs like Doctor Almanac, the Reverend Doctor Theobald Schädelhaus, Jeremiah Zodiac, Jack the Ripper, Adrian Countenance, Professor Necrosis, and so on-- those whose ambitions often included wiping out large segments of the human population. Honest gangsters and vice peddlers like the Stiff and Samedi did not call for the Black Centipede's unique talents. They committed no violence against members of the public. For the most part, they subsisted on the kinds of diversions the so-called guardians of society frown upon: Booze, dope, illicit sex, gambling, and suchlike.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't care to live in a society where the masses are deprived of these things. It's difficult enough to keep the lid on as it is. Can you imagine the powder keg we'd be sitting on if those outlets were to disappear?
"Yes," said the Stiff. "The girls let me know what was going on." I glanced at Patience and Prudence, both of whom now had beatific smiles on their faces. "I wanted to get in touch with you earlier, but you are difficult to pin down. As you should be."
"Yes, well. I hope you can enlighten me. I dislike fumbling in the dark."
"Arguably, that is all any of us ever do. But I know what you mean. I'll tell you everything I know, but I don't believe I can provide full illumination."
"At this point, even a feeble candle would be welcome."
"We have heard some disturbing rumblings out of Hollywood. As you know, Samedi was out there for several months. Oh, by the way, congratulations on the movie. I understand it has been a phenomenal success. I have yet to see it, myself, but I intend to."
"Please don't blame me for it," I said. I was perfectly serious.
"I won't. I understand from Samedi that you had an interesting time while you were there. Jack the Ripper returned, and then there was the White Centipede and the Black Centipede Eater. You dealt with all of them, but not before they got up to some serious mischief. The White Centipede had been there for the better part of a year before you arrived. He put together a small but formidable organization. When he fell, and Judith DeCortez disappeared-- that was you, too, I take it-- there was a vacuum. Samedi filled some of it, but there were other facets of the White Centipede's operation that we wanted no part of. He was involved in some ghastly enterprises, William."
"Don't I know it! I have never in my life enjoyed burying someone eight feet deep in a block of solid concrete as much as I did him."
"They say the simple pleasures are the best. Well, Samedi choked these enterprises off as best he could, but quite a few of the White Centipede's confederates got away. Tell me, have you ever heard of Doctor Herbert West?"
I had indeed. West had been the subject of a story written by my friend, Howard Lovecraft, in the early 1920s. The title of the tale was "Herbert West: Reanimator." And what Herbert reanimated was human corpses. It was, as Howard himself freely admitted, not his best work. But, like almost all of his fiction, it was, save for a few details, absolutely true.
To his dying day, Howard Lovecraft believed that he had created Doctor Herbert West, Abdul Alhazred, the Necronomicon, and the whole horrific pantheon of dark monstrosities that comprised what would come to be known as the Lovecraft Mythos. In this, he was mistaken.
Howard had a gift that he never recognized until it was much too late. He knew things. He was privy to the truths behind great mysteries that were unknown to most of mankind. Everything he wrote had a strong basis in fact, and he believed he had conjured up every bit of it in his own imagination. Don't get me wrong-- this does not detract from his genius as a storyteller. Howard's imagination was incredibly fertile.
The only question was, who or what was doing the fertilizing?
"Yes, I have," I said to the Stiff. "But it was my understanding that he died many years ago."
"William," he replied, in the tone of voice one uses on a child who has difficulty grasping the obvious, "I died several months ago. You yourself passed away rather spectacularly back in June. Yet here we are, firmly on this side of the Great Divide, inhabiting our corporeal bodies and having a conversation over a very earthly telephone line."
"Okay, right," I said sheepishly. "Forget I said anything."
"I already have. Now, West survived his apparent death in 1921. Either he didn't really die, or he or someone else engineered his return. What he was up to from that point until he resurfaced in California last year, I do not know. Samedi was unable to pin down any details, but it is certain that West worked with the White Centipede for many months. On what, nobody knows. There were strange rumors of a woman's corpse that had been stolen from a cemetery in England and brought to Hollywood for purposes unknown. And that was only one of dozens of peculiar tales that circulated in the underworld out there. West disappeared shortly after the White Centipede did, and nobody knows anything about it."
"Where does Doctor Almanac come in?"
"I know very little about that. From what I have heard, he was in fact killed during our battle at the Zenith Gold Exchange. He did not escape from custody when the motorcade transporting him was attacked. Rather, someone stole his body, and made one hell of a mess doing it." (Creeping Dawn: The Rise of the Black Centipede, by Chuck Miller, Pro Se Press, 2011.)
"Someone?" I said, powerfully intrigued. "Would that someone's name be too much to hope for?"
"It would. This anonymous person made off with the doctor's corpse. Obviously, that was the work of someone with power and ruthlessness in equal measure. It might be a group of people.
"In any event, it is said that the White Centipede and Herbert West took delivery of the body. That is absolutely all I know about that, and I can't even be sure it's the truth. However, it does seem ludicrous and improbable enough to be completely authentic. Most rumors are incredibly mundane, you know."
"And how does Mag DeMilby fit in?" I wondered aloud.
"I cannot say. He is in cahoots with somebody, and they have had something brewing for months, according to the information we have obtained."
Months. That was very interesting, indeed. Percy had claimed that he concocted his Doctor Reverso scheme mere days ago. I was really going to have to have a serious talk with him. And when I say serious, I mean the kind of thing that two people enter into, but only one of them finishes. I had a hard time believing that Percy would knowingly enter into a conspiracy with a fiend, but how well did I really know him? Back in Hollywood, he had proved to be full of surprises. It was there that I got my first indications that he was a pathological liar. So, how many more surprises might he be carrying?
"This intelligence," the Stiff continued, "was pieced together by Samedi over a period of several weeks. He picked up a fact here, a conjecture there, and has been trying to assemble them into something that makes sense."
I sighed. "If Woodrow can't do it, nobody can."
"No. Not yet, at any rate. But we at least have a bare outline. Obviously, I cannot even offer a conjecture as to why DeMilby might be after you, or what he intends to do when he gets you. It is both fortunate and eerie that young Stymie Beard happened to overhear DeMilby's half of a guilty conversation, and that he took the initiative to warn you in person."
"You know about that?"
"Of course. I told you, the girls briefed me."
I nodded, which was, of course, useless over the phone. I had been with Patience and Prudence continuously since the train depot incident. They had, of course, not spoken to anyone-- Except Stymie, if what he had told me was true, which I was certain it was. But they had spoken to nobody else, nor had they used a telephone or any other communication device. But I knew the Stiff was telling me the truth, and I thought again of Patience's metronomic finger. It seemed that the girls were even more formidable than I knew. And what I knew was pretty damned impressive.
"Of course," I said matter-of-factly, as though were discussing something commonplace. "But what I really want to know is..."
Before I could finish my sentence, two things happened. One of my other phone lines began to ring. I told the Stiff to hold on for a moment, and was reaching over to answer the other line, when the second thing manifested itself.
A horrific, metallic screeching noise, accompanied by a sharp rhythmic thumping, reached my ears. The noises were coming from outside the conference room and down the hall-- the Unwelcome Guest Suite. It sounded like the steel door was being pounded off of its hinges.
Rushing out into the hall, gun drawn, I saw that it was just what it sounded like. The door had buckled, and there were five or six indentations where something had struck it.
The funny thing was, the door was buckling inward, and the indentations were on the outside. But there was nothing visible in the hallway. I watched another concave dent appear as though the door were abusing itself of its own accord. I fired at a place where any invisible thing hammering on the door ought to be standing. I didn't hit anything. The bullet smacked into the reinforced window at the end of the hall. I fired again, aiming a little to my right this time, and got the same result.
Meanwhile, a few more dents had come into being. As I moved cautiously forward, brandishing my useless pistol, the door gave one final screech, sheared nearly in two down the middle, and clattered to the floor inside the suite.
The ruckus had evidently roused Anonymoushka from her ether-induced slumber. I heard her exclaim, "What in the god blasted devil is this, then? Show yourself, you reprehensible ocelot! Where I come from, a creature that refuses to expose itself is shunned and hated. No more backbone than a common Lithuanian file clerk!"
I had almost made it to the doorway when my "guest's" tirade was abruptly cut off by a sound which simply had to be something very strong and very heavy smashing through the rear wall of the suite. Though it was one of the Benway's outer walls, it had no windows, vents or openings of any kind.
Until now.
Now it had a big opening.
Before I could quite process what I was seeing, I was accosted by Proofy.
"Sir," he said breathlessly, having run at least fifteen feet to catch up with me. "Lieutenant Bartowski is on the line. He says it's an extreme emergency."
"What is this?" I said, pointing at the gaping hole,through which we could see daylight. "Chopped liver?"
"Oh my goodness!"
"Watch your language, Proofy, " I said as I moved into the room. "And stand back. Stay in the hall."
I was not immediately killed, which I found encouraging. Thus emboldened, I cautiously approached the new addition to the suite's decor. I availed myself of it, leaning out and looking up at the sky above. That seemed clear, so I looked down at the alley sixty-five stories below me. I saw nothing, apart from the small pile of rubble that had landed there. It did not appear to have hit anyone, but I could hear a ruckus of some kind down on the street on the other side of the building. Sounded a bit like a mob on the verge of panic.
"Please, sir," Prufrock was whining to me from out in the hallway. "The Lieutenant said you should come to the phone immediately. He said to tell you this was a 'code purple.'"
That got my attention. In the personal code Stan Bartowski had developed, a "code purple" was about as bad as it could get. The only thing higher was a "code indigo." That one was reserved for the end of the world.
I raced back to the conference room and snatched up the phone.
"What is it, Stanley?" I asked, as cordially as I could manage under the circumstances.
"What the hell isn't it?" he shot back. That didn't make much sense, but before I could ask for a clarification, he forged ahead:
"The city is under attack, Centipede," he said, in a voice I had not previously heard come out of him. "We got six huge dirigibles in the air over downtown, and they're dropping bombs or something. One of 'em's right over the goddamn Benway Building! I dunno what the hell's going on. And here's the kicker: These goddamn airships all have something painted on the sides, up close to the nose. It's a picture of... somebody."
Stanley seemed more upset than I would have expected, even under the circumstances he had just described. So, even though I hated to do it, I asked the obvious question.
"Whose picture?"
He took a deep breath and said exactly what I knew he was going to say:
"Doctor Almanac."
Yeah, "code purple" at the very least.
CLICK HERE FOR CHAPTER NINE
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