The Bay Phantom is almost upon us

Mobile, Alabama, 1931.

Joe Perrone is a wealthy young man, heir to a commercial fishing fortune, whose parents and older brother were murdered by burglars. Mirabelle Darcy is his housekeeper.
They have secrets.

Joe has a darkness inside him, and it has led him to forge a strange path for himself. Joe puts on a mask and a cape at night and fights crime as the Bay Phantom. He has not donned the mask in three years, since his epic battle with the diabolical Doctor Piranha left him feeling uncertain about the condition of his own soul. But, after a period of wandering and reflection, he has returned. He does what he believes he must, fighting mobsters, killers, fiends,  a corrupt police force, and a city administration that does not want his help. He operates according to his own personal philosophy and moral code, and keeps his identity a secret so he can continue his work unimpeded.

Mirabelle is one of the nine smartest people in the world. Her IQ is virtually incalculable, and she has mastered a dozen different scientific disciplines on her own. She is also black, and she lives in a society deeply divided by segregation and oppression. To reveal her intellect and secret accomplishments would be to invite scorn, ostracism-- and, quite possibly, lethal violence. So she labors in secret.

Tull House, a 200-year-old former smuggler's den on the Mobile Bay is their home.
When a deadly struggle begins between the powerful, covertly criminal Carter family and an upstart named Hector Sams and his mysterious backers, Joe and Mirabelle find themselves in the middle of a hurricane of mystery and murder, and are locked into a deadly struggle of their own, against the horrific avatars of the two warring factions: The Werewolf and the Black Embalmer.

Even with the help of Doctor Sigmund Freud, can Joe and Mirabelle unravel the lies, secret associations, and conspiracies in a town where absolutely nothing is what it seems? Can they preserve the lives of innocent citizens caught up in the gang war, and their own lives as well? Will they live long enough to discover the most deeply-buried secrets of all-- the unremembered traumas that made them what they are?


Find out in "A Confederacy of Devils" by Chuck Miller, with art by Zachary Brunner, coming soon from Airship 27.

 http://www.airship27.com/

BLACK CENTIPEDE CONFIDENTIAL

The Black Centipede and his friend and partner, Amelia Earhart, will return in Black Centipede Confidential, facing off against Professor Moriarty, Lord of the Vampires, and his diabolical Order of the Sunless Circle. The stakes are higher than ever this time around, and our heroes will be sorely pressed. But they will not fight alone. Joining them will be the members of the Black Centipede's Invisible Round Table.

 BLACK CENTIPEDE CONFIDENTIAL: THE FIGHT CARD

(Some names appear on both lists. They aren't typos-- they're just fickle.)

THE BLACK CENTIPEDE and the INVISIBLE ROUND TABLE:

Amelia Earhart

Anonymoushka

Gregor Samsa
Patience and Prudence

J. Alfred Prufrock

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Percival Doiley

Resurrection Mary

Lester Dent

Walter B. Gibson

Bela Lugosi

John Dillinger

Mary Jane Gallows

Dr. Wilhelm Reich

Frank Nitti

and a

SUPER-SECRET SURPRISE GUEST HERO!

VERSUS

 PROFESSOR JAMES MORIARTY, LORD OF THE VAMPIRES, and the 
ORDER OF THE SUNLESS CIRCLE:

Bonnie Parker

Clyde Barrow

Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd

John Dillinger

Kate "Ma" Barker

Max Schreck

Dr. Herbert West, Re-Animator

Zelda Fitzgerald

Dr. Hawley Crippen

Mary Jane Gallows

Judith DeCortez

Stagger Lee

The Loch Ness Monster

The Bell Witch

and a

SUPER-SECRET SURPRISE GUEST ARCH-FIEND!

BLACK CENTIPEDE CONFIDENTIAL-- MAY be published within the lifetime of the author and the readers, we hope. So, to renew your acquaintance and/or whet your appetite, here is an excerpt from BLOOD OF THE CENTIPEDE:

CHAPTER TEN: FISHING TRIP


Frank Nitti had been as good as his word-- a relatively new experience for him, I imagined-- and Amelia and I went out on another fact-finding mission, armed with the list of speakeasies. I went unmasked, dressed in something other than one of my customary suits of solemn black. Amelia, very wisely, had donned a suit of men's clothes and had her hair stuffed up under a newsboy cap.

I had taken possession of my car that afternoon-- I had made arrangements for it to be shipped out on a freight train when it started looking like I might need it.  Amelia and I visited one dive after another, and we played it very low-key.  We sat and drank and listened to conversations around us. We identified the drunkest and most questionable-looking patrons and struck up acquaintances, paying for drinks, listening to stories, asking very discreet questions. We learned the same rumors over and over again, about an unknown new crime boss who was trying to set up shop, and about the mad Judith DeCortez, who was thought to be working for him.

Nothing we didn't already know.

"The important thing about an iron fist in a velvet glove," I observed at one point, "is that it has an iron fist in it. We're getting nowhere fast using the glove by itself."

"I'm just not comfortable with all that violence."

"Nobody is. That's how come it works."

She heaved a heavy sigh. "Maybe you're right."

"Of course I am. I don't see how you ever could have doubted it. I am, after all, an expert. Whoever this guy is-- whether he's this so-called White Centipede or not-- he is ruthless. Judith DeCortez is ruthless. That means whoever goes up against them has got to be ruthless, too. He has to be more ruthless than they are, or he will not win. And if he doesn't win, he is dead. Very straightforward."

Amelia stood up. "Well, in any event, I think I've had enough of this. Let's go."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Anywhere. I could really use some fresh air."

So we hit the street and walked around aimlessly for the better part of an hour. We were dressed rather roughly, and I had plastered an expression on my face that was an unmistakable warning to anyone who thought he might like to try any rough stuff on us. I wasn't worried about ordinary muggers and sex perverts. I almost wished somebody would get big ideas-- the exercise would have done me some good.

As we crossed a street at the corner, something caught Amelia's eye. She peered up the cross street and said, "Isn't that Roscoe Arbuckle?"

"Where?"

"Ducking into that alley, there." I looked in the direction she was pointing her finger, and saw a figure that certainly matched Fatty in terms of height and girth.

"Could be," I said. "Wonder what he's doing down here."

"So do I. Let's find out."

I shrugged and followed her toward the mouth of the alley. I didn't have anything better to do. And if Fatty was a habitué of this kind of neighborhood, he might be of some help.

We reached the alley and peeped around the corner. I saw someone slip around the corner at the other end of the alley, but whoever it was was too tall and slender to be Arbuckle. From where I was, I could not see any doorways into which Fatty might have ducked. Motioning for Amelia to remain where she was, I crept around the corner and made my way toward the opposite end of the alley. There were no convenient doorways, and I figured Fatty-- or whoever it was-- had simply cut through to the next street. I was on my way back to Amelia when something caught my eye.

Someone had chalked a few words onto the brick wall roughly at the halfway point of the alley. They were as high up as the shoulders of an average man, and they looked fresh:

The Juwes are the men That Will not be Blamed for nothing

If not for the fact that I have nerves of steel and ice water in my veins, I would no doubt have felt an icy talon clutching my heart just then. I recognized that sentence. And what was chalked onto the wall just below it, in smaller letters, gave me considerable pause:

It Begins Again

"What's that?" Amelia asked, peering over my shoulder, apparently having trotted up while I was in deep contemplation.

"This?" I replied. "It's nothing. Just some silly graffiti."

She gave it a look. "Huh. Crazy. Is that some kind of anti-Semitic screed?"

"I guess." I didn't tell her where, and under what circumstances, the odd message with the curious spelling had famously appeared many years earlier.  It had been found scrawled on a wall in London, England, some 44 years before, in close proximity to two very extraordinary murders. Many believed that the message had been written by the faceless jackal known as Jack the Ripper.

You know, the guy they never caught...
 
But it probably didn't mean anything here. I filed it away in my brain. I had bigger things to worry about.

"Gosh," Amelia said, "there are a lot of Jews in the movie business. I hope nobody's trying to start some of that Nazi crap over here."

"So do I," I said.

"No Fatty?" she asked.

"No Fatty," I affirmed.

We decided to call it a night.

Back in my room, I went through the motions of another fruitless attempt to analyze the material I had obtained from the rubber-suited woman. None of it made sense. I crawled into bed and glanced through the newspaper.

The first of FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps facilities had just opened in Michigan. In Scotland, someone claimed to have spotted a huge aquatic monster in Loch Ness. Adolf Hitler had eliminated all of the labor unions in Germany. Someone calling himself the Blue Candiru had foiled a bank robbery in Los Angeles. Another new masked avenger, evidently. Hooray.

I tossed the paper onto the floor, turned off the light, and went to sleep.

Now BUY it already!

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Centipede-Chuck-Miller/dp/1479353582/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348274723&sr=8-1&keywords=blood+of+the+centipede

TOPICAL AGAIN AFTER ALL THESE YEARS!

Aaron Kosminski or not, Jack the Ripper causes problems for our hero in  this excerpt from "Blood of the Centipede" by Chuck Miller.$2.99 ON AMAZON KINDLE:
 
http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Centipede-Black-Book-ebook/dp/B009GVO43S/ref=la_B005WX2CKQ_1_2_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410328838&sr=1-2

CHAPTER ONE: HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD
(From the Secret Journals of the Black Centipede)


On an oppressively hot night in the late spring of 1933, I found myself in an unenviable position on a studio backlot deep in the dark and foetid heart of Hollywood, California.

 
The lot was vast, a huge patch of surreal fungus choking the land with its empty, make-believe mock-ups of ancient Rome, the American West, a distant planet, the battlefields of Europe. A full moon shone down on this cold, schizoid grandeur, illuminating five human shapes in a tense tableau that was not part of any script.

I, the Black Centipede, legendary crime fighter and scourge of evil, was one of those shapes, and I was at a disadvantage. I had four broken ribs, two missing fingers, a possible concussion, and a pair of empty automatic pistols.

Another of the shapes was Amelia Earhart, the only thing I had close at hand that even resembled an ally, and she lay sprawled in the dust behind me, either unconscious or dead.

I fervently wished I had a few more assets on my side, seeing as how I was confronting three of the most lethal homicidal maniacs the world has ever known. And that is not hyperbole.

One of them was a madman called the White Centipede. He and I apparently had quite a history, of which I was completely unaware. The second was a charming creature known as the Black Centipede Eater, about whom more anon.

The third maniac, you've probably heard of.

His real name is as unimportant as it is unknown. His "nickname" is everything. He first made his mark in 1888 when he murdered five women in the Whitechapel section of London. He was never apprehended, never went to trial for those murders.

He called himself Jack the Ripper, and he was the closest thing to a demon in human shape that I have ever encountered.

Which made him the least of my worries at that moment, or so I thought.  Demons and monsters are very straightforward creatures. You usually know where you are with them. They are unimaginative, and completely out of their depth with someone like me.I didn't take the Ripper as seriously as I should have that night. I regarded the other two as the real threats. I planned to concentrate all that remained of my personal resources on them just as soon as I disposed of this relic standing before me, clutching his knife and leering, dressed in a suit that had gone out of style half a century ago. I had fought him before, quite recently, and I thought I had his measure. He looked depleted. I figured our earlier encounters had taken a lot out of him.

"Don't you ever get tired of being a period piece?" I inquired. My tone was light and flippant, the implication being that he was damn near beneath my notice, but I would be gracious enough to take a bit of my valuable time to stomp on him like a cockroach.

The Ripper smiled and tossed his knife up in the air. It flipped a couple of times before he caught it by the handle. It was a gesture of contempt, his way of demonstrating the casual ease with which he could do the thing he was about to do.

His maneuver had created a split-second opening, and I tried to take advantage of it. I swung the fine, precision firearm-- now nothing more than a crude, blunt instrument--  in an arc that would catch him right between the eyes.

I didn't quite make it.

Instead, I received an object lesson in the folly of judging by appearances. The Ripper's knife was sharper than it looked, his arm stronger. Moving much faster than I did, he sank his double-edged, ten-inch blade into my gut all the way to the hilt, then yanked it upward with both hands until my breastbone stopped it. I was quite certain that the tip of the knife had come out through my back, right next to the spinal cord.

I looked down at the stuff spilling out of me, looked back up, started to say something, forgot what it was, and fell flat on my back. The knife, lodged in my torso, slipped from the Ripper's bloody fingers as I fell.

I had learned a lesson, but it looked as though I'd never have an opportunity to benefit from it, which struck me as pointless and wasteful.

Just before my mind winked out, I saw the Ripper standing over me, jerking his blade out of my torso. In doing this, he dislodged a couple of things from my abdominal cavity that I would have preferred to hang on to. He didn't say a word to me.

Then I went beyond thought and feeling and identity, into a very dark and quiet place...

**
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OF MONSTERS AND MEN

NEW FROM MOONSTONE BOOKS!

INCLUDES "Zero Squared" by Chuck Miller!
 
Nine brand NEW tales of PULP HEROES vs MONSTERS!
The Green Lama, Richard Knight, Captain Future, Green Ghost, Moon Man, and more…
Battle demons and monstrosities from out of this world, by some of today's top talents!

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BONUS: The special Hardcover edition features all the stories in the Soft Cover as well as 100 extra pages that reprint the previously published “Domino Lady vs Mummy”, “Black Bat vs Dracula”, and “Phantom Detective vs Frankenstein”!

Vionna and the Vampires sample

Known for taking Genre Fiction in strange, twisted directions, award winning author Chuck Miller, creator of 'The Black Centipede', leads readers on a brand new 'Psychedelic Pulp' experience with his latest novel from Pro Se Productions- VIONNA AND THE VAMPIRES: Book One of the Moriarty, Lord of The Vampires Trilogy!

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” So said Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, more than a century ago.

Vionna Valis and Mary Jane Kelly are a pair of hard working psychic detectives experiencing a run of bad luck. A new detective agency, the Femmes Fatales, is taking most of their business. Things seem to change for the better in the form of a new client named Scudder Moran, a wealthy young man with a unique problem; He has been targeted by the very, very late Professor James Moriarty—the Napoleon of Crime in another century, now Lord of the Vampires! Unexpected help arrives in the ghostly person of the Great Detective himself, and they set about unraveling a tangled web of lies and secrecy that reaches deep into each of their lives. Can they find the light before Moriarty unleashes his final, most horrific scheme?

"Chuck Miller," says Tommy Hancock, Partner in and Editor-in-Chief of Pro Se Productions, "is by far one of the most unique talents in Genre Fiction today. He takes the staples and standards of several different types of stories and doesn't just mix them together. Somehow he intricately weaves usually disparate parts into the wildest trip on fiction I think any reader has ever taken. The Black Centipede stands out as a vastly distinct character from the rest of his masked cohorts and You'll most definitely discover that Vionna and her cast of cohorts shine in their own deliciously dark way as well."

VIONNA AND THE VAMPIRES by Chuck Miller (Creator of The Black Centipede) is the first volume in the “Moriarty, Lord of the Vampires” trilogy. With a demonically evocative cover by Jeff Hayes and format and design by Percival Constantine, this is definitely an opening chapter to a trilogy like no other in New Pulp.

VIONNA AND THE VAMPIRES is available in print and Kindle from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Vionna-Vampires-Moriarty-Lord-Book-ebook/dp/B00IXX9OB2/ref=la_B005WX2CKQ_1_6_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409659532&sr=1-6

SAMPLE CHAPTER from  
VIONNA and the VAMPIRES:
PART THREE
THE GHOST AND THE MACHINE
 
CHAPTER ONE: SHERLOCK HOLMES DISCOURSES

“Vionna,” Mary said gently. “Whatever is the matter?”

I had just stumbled down the stairs, after pulling on some sweatpants and a t-shirt. I was thinking about the very vivid dream I had just had, and it was making me cry. On top of that, my head was pounding. I don't mean I had a bad headache. I wasn't in any pain at all. It just felt like there was some kind of pounding going on in there-- muffled, but strong and steady.

I must have looked kind of crazy, because Mary seemed shocked when she laid eyes on me. As for me, I was so happy to see her alive, I ran and hugged her as hard as I could.

"Vionna!" she said. "What is it?"

"I had a dream," I said. "A very, very, very strange and bad dream."

"What happened in it?"

I shook my head. "I can't say right now." I let go of her and stood back, sniffling loudly.

"Have you had another of those strange lapses? We need to discuss those, Vionna. I think I may know..."

She didn't finish her sentence because poor little Vionna chose that moment to roll her eyes back in her head and fall to the floor. The pounding had become stronger and faster, and now something else was going on, too. It seemed I was hearing voices, more than one of them, coming from down in the bottom part of my mind. They got louder and louder, but I couldn't tell what they were saying.

“Oh gosh,” I said. “Oh, wow. Mary, I see what’s going on. There’s someone ELSE in here now!” I started pounding on my right temple with the heel of my hand.

Mary grabbed me by my wrists to make me stop hitting myself.

“Vionna,” she said, in the kind of voice you use on hysterical children or people who just aren’t right in the head. “Calm down, sweetheart. Everything is okay.”

By this time, I was bawling.

“No it isn’t!” I shook my head rapidly back and forth, flinging tears and snot all over the place, including onto Mary, who either didn’t notice it or decided to pretend it wasn’t happening.

“It isn’t okay,” I wailed. “I can’t have anyone else living in here. Next, it will be a whole family, and their dogs and cats too. I’m not big enough! I’ll collapse, and we’ll all die! I don’t wanna be Ground Zero!”

“Shhhh,” Mary shushed, pulling me by the wrists over to the couch and making me sit down.

“Darling,” she said soothingly, “you must gain control of yourself. Whatever is happening, you can deal with it. I shall help you.”

We went back and forth like this for quite a while. I won’t write all of it down because I’m sure you aren’t interested in four or five solid pages of me wigging out. I’ll just cut to the chase, which consists of me sitting quietly, wiping my face with my shirtsleeve.

“Here,” Mary said, handing me a hanky. “You don’t want that all over your clean shirt.” For a second, she reminded me of my mother, but then I remembered that I don’t remember my mother at all.

“Let me try something,” she said. “As you know, I haven’t been able to sense or communicate with your ‘Roommate.’ But if some new entity is trying to take up residence, I may be able to do something for you. I know where the odd things you've been saying come from. I didn't say anything because I didn't know what to make of it. But something must be done. My psychic powers aren’t all that reliable, but, as they say, it couldn’t hurt.”

Sniffling, I said to her, “You have no way of knowing that, but I don’t care, go ahead. Quickly please.”

Mary got all quiet. A while back, she watched an episode of “Star Trek” where Mister Spock did that Vulcan mind thing with somebody, and it really impressed her. She closed her eyes, twisted her hands into funny shapes, and put the tips of her fingers on my forehead and temples.

I closed my eyes, too.

Mary said, “My mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts… Ah, here I am. This is one of those representational telepathic virtual environments I have read about. You’re unconsciously creating it yourself. Goodness, but it’s realistic. Like a big, old castle. You really should consider going into architecture, Vionna."

I couldn't see any of what Mary was seeing. I had my eyes shut tight, in both the actual world and my telepathic virtual environment.

“Ah, there’s the door behind which your ‘Roommate’ lives. My goodness, it’s solid steel. It appears to have no hinges and no handle. Just a tiny opening, like a mail slot. Perhaps your lost memories are in there, too. But that isn’t… Hello, what's this? It looks like a sound stage or a.. a movie lot! Why, it's London, in what appears to be the late Nineteenth Century. What on earth?

"Oh! There IS someone else in here.

“Yes, I can see you there," Mary said, evidently to somebody inside my head; I couldn't hear whoever it was, but apparently Mary could. 

"Whatever are you up to? Do you know you are causing this young woman a great deal of agitation? What did you say? You must speak up. Come closer, please, or would you rather I come to you? Very well. Let me just get a look at you, then. Are you… Oh my! Oh my effing God! It’s YOU! This is… I wasn’t effing expecting anything like this! Gee effing dee!

“What’s that? Oh, I know. But this is the twenty-first century. Everyone talks that way now. Even women and children. But never mind. What are you doing here? How did you get here? I see. Yes, I shall help you out of here. It must be frustrating for you. I can lend you sufficient energy for a very clear and stable manifestation. Hold my hand, now. Are you ready? On the count of three, then. One… two…”

THREE! The inside of my head suddenly felt the way it was supposed to. It was a great relief. I opened my eyes, then blinked them several times because they were kind of sore, like they get when you’re really sleepy. When I could see again, I found Mary at my right side.

And on my left was a man I had not expected to see again so soon.

The look he was giving me is what I think they call pensive. He was sort of smiling, but he also looked like he was afraid he was about to get into huge trouble over something.

I turned back and looked at Mary again. I opened my eyes up really wide and raised my eyebrows, which is how you ask “What?” without actually saying it.

“Vionna,” she said. “I’d like you to meet an old friend of mine.” She made her voice sound all formal, in a joking way, if you know what I mean.

“Miss Vionna Valis, may I present Mister Sherlock Holmes.”

“Sherlock Holmes,” I said.

“Yes,” said Mary. "His ghost, at any rate. Mister Holmes, this is my dear friend, Vionna Valis."

“Indeed,” said the ghost, nodding at me." I feel I know you already after what passed between us last night," he told me. If somebody had walked into the room at that moment, and that was all they heard, they might get some funny ideas.

Mary looked surprised. "You two... know one another?"

"Did you put that dream into my head?" I asked, ignoring Mary for the moment.

"I did," said Holmes. "Your mind is a great deal less chaotic when you are asleep. I was able to gather my wits and communicate with you in that fashion. Honestly, Miss, I was afraid I would never be able to get out of your head. You have a power about you... Well, thanks to Miss Kelly, I finally did. What I showed you last night was a series of events from 1888, more or less as they happened. I merely deleted my friend Watson and put you in his place."

"What dream?" Mary asked. "The one you were upset about earlier, Vionna?"

"Uh-huh. But I don't think it was really a dream at all."

"It wasn't," Holmes said. "There really isn't a word for what it was. It is simply something that I found myself able to do. I induced it, but I did not have full control over it. Miss Valis, you seemed to pick up on things of which I was unaware at the time. In some fashion, we may have actually gone back there, to that time and place."

"Yeah," I said. "Or one just like it. When I was there, I didn't know anything about my actual real life here in the present. I met you there, Mary, but I didn't know who you were."

Holmes smiled. "You perceived facts and made deductions that I was unable to, the first time I experienced those events. I believe you may have learned things I still do not know."

Sherlock Holmes turned his attention to Mary. “Miss Kelly,” he said, “I am so terribly sorry I was unable to prevent your murder, or lay my hands upon the fiend that slaughtered you. Of course, I knew you had returned, and I'm pleased to see that things have turned out so nicely for you. It’s good to see you."

“And you, sir,” Mary said. “As for the Ripper, trouble yourself no further. That is long in the past.”

“Indeed,” said the ghost. “But I cannot help feeling responsible for drawing you into my deeply-flawed plan, and for what happened to you as a result.”

“Mister Holmes,” Mary said, “I willingly entered into your plan. But there were factors of which both you and I were unaware. The Ripper was not at all what we thought he was. You could not have known, any more than I could have. We were unlucky, that is all. I would do it again without hesitation.”

The ghost made himself look super-humble and said something about how touched he was by her saying that.

“Mary,” I said into the silence that fell after he was done, “you never told me you knew Sherlock Holmes.”

“You never asked,” Mary replied. “I’ve done a great many things and known a great many people I’ve never had cause to bring up. You never told me you knew him!”

"I didn't until a couple of hours ago."

Mary turned to Holmes and said, "I am eager to hear the story of how you came here, and what your purpose is. I don’t believe you’re the sort to flit back from the afterlife for a lark.”

“No. In death, as in life, I am ruthlessly pragmatic. I think. I find that I can remember almost nothing about the other side right now. Undoubtedly this is a product of my descending from a higher sphere into a lower one.”

“I am familiar with the phenomenon,” said Mary.

”Yes, you would be, of course,” replied the ghost.

He turned to look at me. “Again, Miss Valis, I apologize for insinuating myself into your mind the way I did. It isn’t quite what I had intended. 

"I wanted to communicate my information to you without actually coming here myself. That is incredibly tricky, in the absence of a medium. But I applied myself to it, and I found you, Miss Kelly. And when I did, I discovered that your friend, Miss Valis, is a great deal more attuned to the 'wavelength' I was on, so I tried to communicate with her instead When I touched her mind, it drew me like iron filings to a magnet. I was pulled completely from the afterlife into her head! I managed to hang on to most of what I wanted to tell you, but it took a great deal of effort, and it cost me much of my ability to actually communicate the information.

"And now, most of the knowledge I had while I was still on the other side is now unavailable to me. What I know is this: There are vampires at work in this world right now, and their leader is Professor James Moriarty. He is, in fact, the reigning Lord of all vampires. I know that he plans some course of action that will have the direst consequences for mankind if it is successful, and I know that this game is even now afoot.

"How," Mary asked, after a minute or so, "did you know to come to us with this information? It seems you were in Vionna's head before Scudder told us his story."

"That, I fear, is difficult to explain. You lack the necessary frame of reference, as I myself do now that I am fully here. The best I can do is to say that time is not the rigid, linear construct most people believe it to be.

“And now here I am, and now I have told you all that I retain of my earlier knowledge. I’m grateful indeed that I don’t make a habit of crossing over this way. Robbed of one of my greatest assets—memory—I fear that I am worse than useless.”

“Nonsense,” said Mary. “That’s rubbish and you know it. Memory and intellect are not the same thing. As far as I can see, your fine mind—or its ectoplasmic analog—is in perfect working order. And I hope Vionna and I can count on you to employ it to the full on our behalf as we investigate these bizarre events.”

The ghost smiled. “I was rather hoping you’d say that, my dear Miss Kelly. I should like nothing better than to be of assistance to you and the charming Miss Valis. And let us hope that we may, once and for all, put an end to the seemingly endless machinations of Professor James Moriarty.”

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The Journal of Bloody Mary Jane

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FROM THE JOURNAL OF BLOODY MARY JANE:

(Introductory Remarks by Mary Jane Gallows)


I was not born in blood. The blood came later.

My birth was dry and silent, and it gave off a black light that could be seen by those few among you who have the right kind of eyes.

I had a mother, just like you. A father, too. They never actually met, my mother and father. The whole arrangement, in fact, was rather backward. My seed came from my mother and grew in my father. I gestated within him, and I learned much while I was there.

This is very difficult for me to explain. As they say, you had to be there. To understand it at all, you’d have to be like me. And you aren’t. You are not like me, and you may count that as a blessing, if you’re the sort that counts blessings.

I was a blessing to my father and a great and ultimately fatal vexation to my mother. I killed her in 1927, and she has not been back since. My father has died more than once, and I have always done my best to help him get back.

In Greek mythology, the goddess Athena sprang from the brow of Zeus, fully grown and ready for bloodshed. Exactly the same as me. I am not, obviously, the daughter of Zeus. My father was someone—something—else entirely. He has, however, attained the status of myth. I daresay there are very few people in the world who have never heard of him.

You certainly know his “trade name.” He was called Jack the Ripper.

In 1888 he was a human being, and then he made himself into Something Else. Four years after his Ascension, he traveled from London to the United States in search of a blot of darkness in the ethereal fabric of the human world. He had sensed it from across the ocean. He could sense people and things that had in them some of what he had in himself.

He came to Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1892 and found my mother. Her name, too, might be familiar to you: Lizzie Andrew Borden. Her darkness and hatred and desire to kill drew him close to her. She had something nasty inside her, thrashing around, craving attention and expression. My father touched it and coaxed it out, showed it what to do. My mother had been trying to give birth all by herself, conducting endless rituals, obsessing, seething, hating.

She might have succeeded with this method, eventually, but she didn’t have to. My father took the seed into himself, and together—though they never met face-to-face—they brought me into the world. Lizzie never knew I had a father at all.

My mother believed me to be a tulpa, and that may well be the case. I prefer to think of myself as sui generis, a thing without precedent. There isn’t a word for me. I am all there is of my kind.

I am Bloody Mary Jane.

THE JOURNAL OF BLOODY MARY JANE ON AMAZON:


http://www.amazon.com/Journal-Bloody-Mary-Jane-Episode-ebook/dp/B00LRJRZME/ref=la_B005WX2CKQ_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409639339&sr=1-12

http://www.amazon.com/Creeping-Dawn-Rise-Black-Centipede-ebook/dp/B006UN2JRS/ref=la_B005WX2CKQ_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409640607&sr=1-4

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