From "The Return of Little Precious" again

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CHAPTER SEVEN: ONE OF OUR CENTIPEDES IS MISSING


I slept for a few hours, then got up and ran a couple of errands. When I returned to the office, I found Dana sitting behind her desk looking like a wet rag. I asked her if she needed some of the hair of the dog, and she gave me the finger. Fair enough. I made casual mention of Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Dana denied any knowledge of or interest in them-- but she looked really uncomfortable. She's a very poor liar.

I sat down and told her about my latest batch of recovered memories. That perked her up a little bit.

"Okay," she said when I was done. "You and I and Vionna were here in Zenith during the Little Precious Crisis. We don't remember anything about it. That is to say, we have screen memories, and somebody put them there. I can't detect any evidence of tampering, but there are techniques that are undetectable even by someone like me. They require a great deal of power. Who has that kind of power?"

"I have no idea," I said. My head was hurting and I wanted a drink. I had a bottle in my desk, but I didn't want to go for it with Dana sitting right there. Not that she would object, but... But what? I didn't know. I just knew I didn't want to do it right in front of her.

I felt the need to do something, but I had no idea what. Glancing out the window, I got an idea.

Because there was the goddamn Overcoat again, skulking in the narrow space between the hardware store and the adjacent brownstone. Good Lord, I was seeing Overcoats everywhere now. I knew I might be coming unglued. But he sure looked real, and here was something I could actually do. I hopped up and dashed out of the office and across the street like I was trying to win a gold medal. Dana yelled something at me, but I wasn't listening.

I was on top of him before he knew what was happening. He turned and tried to start running, but I grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against the wall.

He looked to be about fifty, though his reddish hair had no gray in it that I could see. He had the kind of face people call "interesting," when they don't want to say what they're really thinking.

Under the coat, he was wearing a dreary seersucker suit. His necktie wasn't a clip-on, but that was about all it had going for it. On his feet were a pair of white sneakers, and on top of his head was perched the crappiest-looking little straw had I have ever seen, before or since.

"Okay," I snarled fearsomely, "You've dogged us all the way across the country and back. I want to know who the hell you are and what the hell you're up to!"

"What are you talking about?" he blustered back. "I haven't dogged anybody across any country!"

"Bullshit," I said, grabbing him by his tie and drawing back my fist. "You tried to kill me in San Francisco. If you don't talk..."

Actually, now that I got a good look at this guy, I didn't think he was the knife-thrower, and he may not have been the mysterious skulker from the other evening. But he was here for some reason.

"Jesus!" he said. "You don't have to be so rough. I'm trying to help you."

"Help me? By spying?"

"I was going to talk with you eventually, but I had to be as sure as I could."

"Sure of what?"

He looked right and left and lowered his voice. "That you hadn't been subverted."

"Subverted by who?"

"The ones behind all this."

"Behind all what?"

He glanced around some more and said, "Look, I don't want to talk about this out in the open. There are ears everywhere."

"Whose ears?"

"You know... THEM. The government. The shadow government, I mean."

"Is that hat of yours lined with aluminum foil?" I asked.

"Certainly not!" he said indignantly. "What good would that do? It's lined with lead foil. Aluminum doesn't stop anything."

"Of course. Well, can you at least tell me who the hell you are?"

"My name's Garrison Knowles. My friends call me 'Grassy.'"

"I'll bet. Who are you working for?"

"Nobody. I'm a freelance journalist."

"Okay, Mister Freelance Journalist," I said. "If I were you, I'd go ahead and tell me why you're here, before I do something unpleasant."

"You already have," he said-- indignantly again. He was going to use up his whole supply on me.

"No, that was me being nice. You're about to see me being rude. If that fails to impress you, I can ratchet it up to hostile just like that." I snapped my fingers.

"That isn't necessary. I tell you, I'm not your enemy, but I think I know who might be. It's just that the information is very, uh...  sensitive."

"So am I. Come on, let's you and me go inside where we can talk. The house is surveillance-proof, so you can even be polite and take your hat off once we're inside."

He didn't want to come with me, but lacked the will or the physical strength to resist me. I practically dragged him into the brownstone and tossed him onto a chair in the office. Dana, who hadn't bothered to follow me this time,  watched impassively and did not speak. Our guest regarded her with fearful suspicion smeared all over his face.

"Here's the creep that's been spying on us," I announced. "Calls himself Assy Holes."

"Knowles is my name," he said archly. "Grassy Knowles. I told you that. You're just being childish."

"I was gonna dismember him out on the street," I said to Dana, "but I thought you might wanna watch."

"I might help," she said, smiling a nasty little smile and cracking her knuckles. Our guest was in for a little bit of our Bad Cop/Terrifyingly Psychotic Cop routine.

I could tell that she didn't think my new friend was the mysterious party who had thrown the knife at us. But, like me, she was eager to learn just what he was up to, and scare tactics were acceptable.

"Now that we're nice and cozy," I said to Knowles, "I have some questions for you. Why did you follow us to San Francisco?"

"I didn't! I told you that once already! I haven't been to San Francisco!"

I looked at Dana. She met my gaze and did a subtle little thing with her eyes that told me she thought Knowles was telling the truth. While she isn't an infallible human lie detector, she has good intuition.

Which is not to say I trusted Knowles. There was something strange about him. That wasn't intuition on my part, it was glaringly obvious. But what was it? It seemed to me that he had something he wanted to let out, but didn't dare.

"Okay," I said, sounding very calm and reasonable. "Tell us what you think is going on. This is about Little Precious. You know we're involved. How you know this, I can't imagine, but I won't insult whatever you use for intelligence by denying it. Do you want to tell us how you found out?"

"Not really. I mean, if it's okay, I'd rather just, you know, protect my sources and so forth."

"We'll accept that for now," I said for the sake of convenience and expediency. I figured he'd throw a fit if we pressed him. "We also  know that someone besides you is keeping an eye on us. We know that someone is manipulating events from somewhere. I don't think it's Jessie Von Cosel. Do you think you know who it is?"

"I might," Knowles replied. "I believe it's one of the shadowiest of all the shadowy groups out there-- maybe the shadowiest."

"Who?" Dana said with a mild smirk. "The Knights Templar? The Freemasons? The Girl Scouts?"

Knowles shook his head. "Worse than any of those. Have you ever heard of the Cult of the White Centipede?"

Dana blinked and my eyebrows went up. Apart from that, we both did an admirable job of keeping our faces blank.

"No," Dana said. "That's a new one on me. What do you know about them?"

"The same thing most conspiracy researchers know. Two things, actually. One, they exist. Two, they do awful things."

"Okay. And..?"

Knowles shrugged. "Um... Actually, that's about it. They are super-secretive, of course. And ruthless. Very, very ruthless. Secret and ruthless, that sums them up. Awful things, done secretly and ruthlessly."

"Such as..?" Dana prompted.

"Well," he said with a bit of a quaver in his voice, "I've heard-- from very reliable sources-- that the White Centipede Cult may have been behind the whole Little Precious thing eleven years ago."

That was certainly interesting. We knew who the White Centipede was, more or less. He was the reason we'd been led by our noses to a cemetery in England a few weeks before by Dana's old schoolmate, Myra Linsky. But this was the first I'd heard of a cult.

"White Centipede Cult," Dana repeated.

"That's what I've heard. If it's true... My God, can you imagine how much power and influence would be necessary to achieve such a thing? That's why this whole thing is so difficult to peel open!"

He was babbling, and I had a feeling he was doing it on purpose. He knew something he didn't want to talk about. I had caught him off-guard and given him no time to prepare for this performance.

"Yes?" I prompted. "And..?"

"That's all I know," insisted Knowles.

"You have to know more," Dana insisted back. "Come on, now. You're not talking to a couple of children here."

"You must have made some connection between us and Little Precious, since that's what you've got on your mind," I added. "What gives?"

Knowles closed his eyes and didn't say anything for almost a minute.

"I don't think I should talk about it," he finally said. He opened his eyes and looked at me. Then he glanced at Dana. When he did that, I caught a tiny glint of fear in his eyes. It was unmistakable. He was afraid of Dana! Why? I mean, she can be pretty scary, but not if you don't know her.

Since he didn't seem as fearful of me, I figured a one-on-one might be more profitable.

I cocked my head and closed my eyes for a few seconds. Then I turned to Dana and said, "I just received a signal on my telepathic uplink. The Emperor of the Purple Goblin Dimension needs to consult with you, and he says it's urgent. You might want to go use the hyperfractal supercommunicator so you can be sure of getting a clear signal."

She picked up on what I was doing right away. That's one of the things I like about her.

"I'm on it," she said, nodding crisply. "The Dark Lord Pferdscheisse must be acting up again. I'll be back."

"Relax, Knowles," I said after Dana was gone. "I'm not going to hurt you, okay? I just want to know what this is all about."

"What it’s about is time," he finally said.

"What do you mean by that?"

"The White Centipede Cult seems to have an obsession with time. Temporal mechanics of all kinds, possibly even time travel."

"Okay," I said. "But what's it all about? You're not giving me that. Why are you here? And why now?"

He chewed his lips and wrung his hands and looked at me almost pleadingly.

"I'd like to trust you, but... I mean, you work with Dana Unknown, and the two of you are obviously close, and... I don't think she's up to anything, but she..."

"You're not making sense," I said. "Or maybe you are. If so, I don't like it. Are you suggesting that Dana Unknown is somehow involved in whatever is going on?"

"No, not her. I told you, I don't think she's... Oh, hell, just look at this."

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded magazine, which he handed to me.

"Here's a copy of a recent issue of National Watchdog Magazine. There's an article in it that I wrote. I want you to read it. That's all. See what you think."

I eyed the front cover coldly, then opened it to the contents page.

"Not right this minute," he whispered. "Don't let her see it. Listen, you aren't holding me here or anything, are you?"

"Of course not," I said. "I'm not the cops or the government. I can't arrest or detain people-- not legally."

"Then I need to go. Here, take this."

He gave me a card with his name and a phone number printed on it.

"That's my local number," he said. "I'm in and out a lot, but if you want to talk to me after you read what I gave you, keep trying, or leave a message."

I stared at him for thirty seconds. Oddly enough, I thought he was on the level-- or at least he believed he was. And I could see no advantage in keeping him there any longer.

"Right, then," I said. "Be on your way. I'm not saying I trust you, and if I find out you're bullshitting me, I will locate you and there will be a reckoning. Paranoid though you may be, I have resources you cannot imagine, and you won't be able to hide."

"That's fine," he said. "If you're part of it, I'm screwed anyhow. But I'll keep investigating and I won't avoid you if you want to get ahold of me."

A minute after Knowles left the brownstone, Dana came back into the office.

"How's things in the Purple Goblin Dimension?"

"Oh, the usual. How's things in this dimension?"

"I didn't learn anything illuminating from Knowles," I said, which was true. Perhaps I would when I read his article, but the magazine was in one of my desk drawers at the moment. I really hated lying to Dana, and I told myself I wasn't doing anything of the sort, I was keeping something from her because I thought it might be for her own good-- but it sounded like bullshit even to me, and I felt like a lousy little creep.

After we had a fruitless little discussion of Grassy Knowles and other things, Dana said she needed to go out for a while. I told her I needed to stay in for a while. She departed.

GET IT HERE: http://www.amazon.com/Return-Little-Precious-Moriarty-Vampires-ebook/dp/B01BJDVFPA/

From THE RETURN OF LITTLE PRECIOUS

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CHAPTER FIVE: THE VANISHING CURIO SHOP


Down in the office the next morning, I found Dana standing in front of her desk frowning at an envelope that must have arrived in the early mail. She held it in her hand as though it were an ugly little animal that might bite her if it got a chance.


"How come you're standing there frowning at an envelope?" I asked.


"It's from my cousin Louis," Dana said. "Why is he writing to me?

The whole family avoids him-- myself included. He's been involved in any number of shady things. Last I heard, he was in the vanishing curio shop business."


"Vanishing curio shop?" I repeated. "What the hell is that?"


"Oh, I'm sure you've heard stories about them. Some poor, hapless schmo-- call him the mark-- is walking around in a part of town he's unfamiliar with. He spots a strange-looking little curio shop and feels irresistibly compelled to go inside. The proprietor is some strange old coot who gives the mark the creeps. The mark notices an exotic object of some sort, and expresses an interest. The proprietor spins some yarn about the object and what it can do-- grant wishes, bestow great personal power, whatever. The mark purchases the object-- usually for a ridiculously low price--takes the object home and uses it for whatever purpose he has in mind. Things are fine at first, but the whole deal quickly goes south. Remember that story, 'The Monkey's Paw?'


"So, the mark returns to the curio shop, hoping the proprietor can help him undo whatever he's done. But when he arrives, he finds an empty lot or an abandoned building that looks nothing like the shop he remembers. A quick canvass of the neighborhood reveals that the building or the lot has been vacant for as long as anyone can remember; there is not, and never has been, a curio shop there. The mark returns to the mess the power object has made of his life, and either dies or loses his mind and gets locked up in an asylum for the rest of his life."


"Jesus," I said, "that's messed up. Why the hell would anybody do a thing like that to people?"


"Practitioners of the Dark Arts claim it increases their personal power by a factor of five every time they fleece a mark. Of course, pulling jobs like that is pure hell on the karma, but that's what they want. Dark Arts practitioners have a thing called anti-karma. They rack up so many demerits they could never possibly atone for them, even if they were reincarnated a thousand times. Once you hit that level, the question becomes moot. They never reincarnate because they never die. Death itself won't touch anybody with that much stink on them. And there's really no point in them dying if they can't come back in another form. They've sabotaged their whole cycle of life and death, and so become untouchable. Basically, they're written off the ledger. They can go on for centuries that way. It's actually pretty elegant in its simplicity, but it's an absolutely repugnant practice, and only the lowest of the low go in for it."


"Like your cousin."


She sighed. "I'm afraid so. I guess you could say I was closer to him than anyone else, because I only disliked him intensely; the rest of the family hated him or worse. But what little I had to do with him was years ago, when I was a kid. Why the hell is he writing to me now?"


"People typically answer that kind of question by opening the letter and reading it," I advised her. "It's always worked for me."


"Shut up, Jack," she said absently as she tore the envelope open and extracted a single folded sheet of paper. She unfolded it and read it. Then she read it again. She was going for a hat trick when I snatched it away from her.


"He has nice penmanship for a fiend," I remarked as I glanced over the thing. "Seems very polite, too. Calls you Dearest Dana in the salutation-- you don't see that very often these days. He inquires about your health, expresses the hope that you are well... Ah, here's the punch line. He hates to bother you and would not dream of imposing on your good nature-- oh, that's a hot one!-- but wonders if you could look into a little matter for him. Sounds like a case of retail theft to me. Some mysterious someone swiped some mysterious something from him-- he says what it is, but I can't pronounce that word..."


"It's pronounced exactly the way it's spelled," Dana said. "Cauliodanbannasertopsis."


"Oh yeah," I said. "So, anyhow, a mysterious somebody swiped his supercalifragilisticexpialiwhateverthefuck, and he needs help getting it back. He thought of you immediately because you're one of the smartest people he knows and one of the most adept sorceresses in the world. Boy, he lays it on, doesn't he? And look how he closes it: 'Yours in Christ.' What the heck? I thought he was irredeemably evil!"


"He is. I can only assume that he's had some kind of a scare thrown into him and he's trying to hedge his bets. Sort of like a politician who gets caught committing adultery, or a serial killer with a death sentence. First thing they do is leap blindly at Jesus. Well, he won't help them-- not under those conditions."


"I assume, then," I said, "that this is going straight into the circular file?"


"I don't think so," Dana said. "I'd ignore it if it were anything but a Cauliodanbannasertopsis. I can't explain why, but I think this has something to do with the Little Precious business."


"Refresh my memory," I said. "What is a wopbopaloobalopalopbamboom again?"


"Something that has the potential to be a very, very dangerous thing, if it falls into the wrong hands."


"Okay, so you're just gonna sit there, then," I said, "and not explain it to me, is that the program?"


"No, of course it isn't. But it's difficult to explain a Cauliodanbannasertopsis..."


"Say," I interrupted, "is there, like, an abbreviated version of that word?"


"That is the abbreviated version."


"Ah."


"It has the power," she said, "to blur the lines between what is and what is not. That which exists and that which does not exist. In fact, it can breach those lines, and allow people and things to pass from one state to the other, and back again. There are places that don't exactly exist, as such. The concept is pure magic-- it cannot be expressed mathematically, it cannot even be theorized about in any school of purely scientific thought. And there are also places that have been magically sealed in one way or another. Sometimes the entrances to the non-existent places fall into that category. Dad used to do a lot of that, but I haven't...


"Well, a Cauliodanbannasertopsis is a sort of magical skeleton key-- it can be used to gain access to such places."


I didn't like the sound of that.


*


Two hours after we read the letter, Dana and I were standing on the sidewalk in front of a seedy vacant lot on one of the dreariest streets in Zenith.


This area of town wasn't far from the brownstone in terms of miles. No more than six blocks away, actually-- Dana and I had walked here-- but it was a world away in terms of ambiance.


"Tell me again why we're standing here like this," I said to Dana.


She consulted her watch. "Because this is where Louis' curio shop will be in five... four... three... two...one."


Suddenly, we were standing in a shadow, rather than the light of the afternoon sun that had been shining through the gap between the buildings. Looking up, I saw that another brick building had manifested itself, neatly filling the slot.


"I'll be damned," I said. "A curio shop. It even says so on the window-- look: CURIO SHOP. How quaint!"


"Let's get this done," Dana said coldly, moving forward and pushing the door open.


We stepped inside. The place was jam-packed with all manner of bizarre objects. There was a long counter at the far end of the room, behind which stood the smiling proprietor of this nightmarish five-and-dime.


Cousin Louis was a surprise. I was prepared to meet a greasy, wormy-looking little specimen, the sort of malicious troll you'd expect to find plying such a loathsome trade. In fact, to be a lot more candid than I'm comfortable being, he was gorgeous. He had an androgynous quality that reminded me of the young David Bowie.


Dana introduced us. Louis offered to shake hands. I declined. Maybe I was imagining things because of what Dana had told me, but I thought I sensed the presence of impossibly concentrated evil.

He moved as though to kiss Dana on the cheek, but she gave him a look that could have capsized a battleship. Louis fumbled and dithered and backed off. He turned his attention to me and asked, "Have you found the Lord Jesus?"


"I didn't know he was lost," I said. "Do you want to hire us for that, too?"


Dana snickered.


"It isn't a laughing matter," Louis said reproachfully. "He died on the cross for your sins, you know."


"Right. Well, I've been making sure he gets his money's worth."


"You should accept him as your lord and savior," Louis said gravely. "That is what he requires of you."


"Have you accepted him?"


"Well, I've, ah... I've tried. It's not easy for someone with a past like mine. Look, you could really help me out here if you'd accept him. If I can score a lot of souls for him, that's bound to work in my favor, don't you think?"


"You'd have to ask a lawyer," I said. "If you can find one that has a soul."


Dana had watched this exchange with considerable amusement Sometimes she appreciates me. I was just getting warmed up, but she caught my eye and gave me a look that said it was time to get down to business.


"Tell us what happened, Louis," she said evenly. "Tell us why we're here."


"Of course, Dana," Louis said. He cleared his throat and began his gripping tale:


"I had touched down in Cleveland. That's always a good place to find marks. Probably the local economy. I had just arrived there when I suddenly found myself under siege! Someone kicked in the front door and rushed me. I was knocked to the floor! The individual then ransacked the premises."


"What was this individual like?" Dana asked. "Did he say anything to you?"


"Yes, he did. A threat of some kind, the exact wording escapes me. But I remember his voice. He had an accent. Sounded Russian to me."


As he reached this point in his tale, Louis began to tremble. He was lying about the wording of the threat, I was sure. He was scared, and it was because of whatever the intruder had said to him. He wasn't going to give that up, but he was telling the truth about everything else. Probably.


"What got me," he was saying, "was that he was all arrayed in spotless white garments. It could have been one of the Lord's angels. That's what scared me so. It could also be one of the fallen ones. I do know that I need that thing back."


"White garments?" Dana asked.


"Well, more sort of beige, I guess, if I think about it. Very nice. I couldn't identify the fabric."


"What did these garments look like?"


"An overcoat and a hat. The brim of the hat was pulled..."


"... down low enough to hide the intruder's face," I finished.


"Yes," Louis said, nodding, "exactly. It also struck me that he might be wearing something over his face-- a mask of some sort-- but I never got a really close look. The lighting isn't the best, as you can see, and everything happened so fast... It was quite jarring. You know, this is the first time a vanishing curio shop has been robbed in almost a decade! It was old Charlie Fishman the last time. Remember him, Dana? Somebody stole a contraption that Charlie had conned H.G. Wells out of. Something big. One of those Martian war machines, maybe."


"That must have been some con," Dana said.


"Oh, Charlie was a smooth one in his day! But he never caught the guy that robbed him. To this day it's a mystery."


"Uh-huh. Was anything else missing from here, Louis?"


"Funny you should say that. I didn't notice until about an hour ago, but a ritual dagger seems to be missing. It has little or no monetary value, and no inherent magical qualities."


"Do you have a picture of it?"


"Indeed I do. I have a picture of the Cauliodanbannasertopsis, too. I have them ready for you."


He handed Dana two photographs. She looked them over, then passed them to me.


"Hmmm," I said, studying the photos. "This one here, I cannot make heads or tails of. But this one looks like the kind of knife that sometimes gets caught by the hilt in midair at a dead run-- don't you think so, Dana?"


"I believe it does," she said. She took the photos back and put them in her little handbag."I'll see what I can do, Louis. I'm very busy at present, but I'll look into it. "


On that note we said goodbye to Cousin Louis. As we stepped through the doorway onto the sidewalk, I felt a great sense of relief. The inside of that shop had been giving me the creeps.


Turning to look back over my shoulder, I saw that vanishing curio shop had... vanished.







GET IT HERE: http://www.amazon.com/Return-Little-Precious-Moriarty-Vampires-ebook/dp/B01BJDVFPA/

THE RETURN OF LITTLE PRECIOUS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WEIRDNESS, HORROR AND PULP COMBINE IN CHUCK MILLER’S ‘THE RETURN OF LITTLE PRECIOUS’- NOW AVAILABLE!

Author Chuck Miller’s wild world of Zenith returns to readers once more, courtesy of Pro Se Productions. Miller’s latest novel featuring the Black Centipede universe, THE RETURN OF LITTLE PRECIOUS, is now available in print and digital formats!

http://www.amazon.com/The-Return-Little-Precious-Moriarty-ebook/dp/B01BJDVFPA

“Chuck Miller has gone and done it once again,” says Tommy Hancock, Partner in and Editor in Chief of Pro Se Productions. “Probably single handedly, Chuck created a sub genre I christened ‘Psychedelic Pulp’ with his first Black Centipede novel. Well, Chuck amps up the insanity and the dead on storytelling with THE RETURN OF LITTLE PRECIOUS. Going places that most imaginations probably ever get close to, Chuck creates a world that is rife with heroes, villains, madness, murder, and good old fashioned fun. Every character makes his or her mark and there isn’t any ride out there in Genre Fiction more fun than the one Chuck Miller’s books take every reader on!”

Eleven years ago, the most lethal terrorist the world has ever seen was apprehended after a four-day rampage that left more than a million dead worldwide. Eight-year-old Jessie Von Cosel, half of the deadly cybernetic entity known as LITTLE PRECIOUS, was tried, convicted and sent to the refurbished detention facility on Alcatraz Island, where she is the only prisoner. The other half of the persona, an unimaginably-advanced robot, was never found. Jessie lapsed into a near-catatonic state until...

Today, Jessie Von Cosel has emerged from her decade-long torpor and is showing alarming signs that the Little Precious persona is coming back online. The authorities summon Dana Unknown, better known as Doctor Unknown Junior, and her obstreperous partner, former superhero kid sidekick Jack Christian, to take action-- but it may already be too late. Dana and Jack plunge into a toxic stew of murder, dark secrets, government cover-ups and black magic, with the help of an unlikely band of allies: Vionna Valis; the Black Centipede; a conspiracy-busting journalist named Garrison "Grassy" Knowles; Dana's father, the reclusive Doctor Unknown Senior; and a certain twice-deceased former Napoleon of Crime.

Can our heroes unravel the horrific plans of the Cult of the White Centipede in time to prevent THE RETURN OF LITTLE PRECIOUS? Find out in Book Three of Chuck Miller’s MORIARTY, LORD OF THE VAMPIRES Trilogy! From Pro Se Productions.

THE RETURN OF LITTLE PRECIOUS, featuring a great cover by _heri and print formatting and logo design by Percival Constantine, is available on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Return-Little…/…/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2… and at Pro Se’s own store at www.prose-press.com for $15.00.
The final chapter in Miller’s MORIARTY, LORD OF THE VAMPIRES Trilogy is also available as an ebook for only $2.99 for the Kindle http://www.amazon.com/Return-Little…/…/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0… and at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/613603.

For more information on this title, interviews with the author, or digital copies to review this book, contact Pro Se Productions’ Director of Corporate Operations, Kristi King-Morgan at directorofcorporateoperations@prose-press.com.

To learn more about Pro Se Productions, go to www.prose-press.com. Like Pro Se on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ProSeProductions.

DOCTOR REVERSO: THE COUP DE GRAS

CHAPTER WHO THE HELL IS EVEN COUNTING?

Jumping to a Hasty Conclusion 
or
"Marginally Better Than Not Finishing It At All"

From the Musty Chronicles of the Black Centipede
As told to
Chuck Miller 

START AT THE BEGINNING:
 http://theblackcentipede.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-return-of-doctor-reverso_17.html

NOVEMBER, 1933

In the end, it went a lot more smoothly than I had any right to expect. So much so, in fact, that coming on top of all this buildup, it amounts to a rather staggering anticlimax. You probably won't like it, but I don't make this stuff up, I just report it.

My grandfather was very fond of cliches like "Let the buyer beware," and, "You get what you pay for." I used to roll my eyes at such platitudes, but now I would ask my readers to keep them in mind. This internet web serial costs you nothing to read. If you are dissatisfied with the outcome, I will gladly return your money in full. Hell, I'll double it. Can't say more fair than that.

I showed up at a certain street corner at an appointed hour to meet with Percy and carry out whatever harebrained scheme he had concocted. Whatever it proved to be, I had my end covered. I had a plan so bold and brilliant that it was absolutely foolproof, no matter what happened. I had planned for absolutely any imaginable contingency.

Except for the one that actually happened.

Of course.

Percy and I waited until half an hour beyond the point at which Mag DeMilby Junior was supposed to show up, in full Doctor Reverso regalia, pretend to attempt to rob a bank, then pretend to get his ass stomped into the pavement by the astonishing Black Centipede. Except I wasn't planning on pretending. I was going to deliver a comeuppance to the villain that was so brilliant, so shocking, so ironic, that....

I'm sorry, I can't even bear to think of it now, much less relate it to you. Such a shameful waste! Because, you see, Cruel and capricious fate had stepped in and taken the matter out of my hands.

Mag DeMilby Junior, unremarkable character actor, arch-fiend, would-be killer of the Black Centipede, was dead.

He had been taken in the night by a heart attack. It seemed he had been nursing a bum ticker for years, and the poor, overworked organ had finally called it quits, no doubt egged on by the prodigious amount of booze and cocaine that constituted 90 percent of DeMilby's regular diet. Rumor has it that, the night before the morning he was found dead in his bed at one of Zenith's finer rat-trap hotels, his suite had been visited by no fewer that eight ladies of the evening. Rumor further has it that the corpse's mouth was frozen in a wide grin that the undertaker had been unable to remove.

And that wasn't all. A journal was discovered among his effects. There aren't many criminals above a certain level who can resist the urge to brag about how clever and ruthless they are. They often do this verbally while they have the hero trussed up and helpless, instead of just killing him and enjoying the fruits of their labors. And if they don't get a chance to do that, you can bet there's a journal lying around somewhere. DeMilby's was most enlightening.

Doctor Herbert West, whose bizarre career had been reported on by my friend Howard Lovecraft, had been working with Jack the Ripper and the White Centipede while I was in Hollywood. Since I was proving difficult to kill, they had intended to throw the resurrected Doctor Almanac at me after they pumped the cadaver full of the hellish combination of the Invisible Man's serum, Crusher Cranium's vile brew, and West's own reanimation reagent. They had approached Mag DeMilby, whose lifestyle made him a prime target for blackmail, and were using him as a source of information on the production schedule of "Blood of the Centipede." DeMilby was so enthusiastic about the project that he swiftly moved up from blackmail victim to paid accomplice.

However, I had been able, with the help of Amelia Earhart and Mary Jane Gallows, to eliminate the Ripper and his henchman before this scheme could come to fruition. (Blood of the Centipede, Pro Se Press, 2012) With their patrons removed from the game, DeMilby kept his mouth shut and West went even further underground than he already was. But they both hated me for derailing their gravy train, and decided to go ahead with the Almanac resurrection after I returned to Zenith. There was still some money and muscle left over from the White Centipede's Hollywood reign, and they used it to set their revenge in motion.

DeMilby hinted in his journal that he and West might have received further sponsorship from a shadowy mastermind whose identity he did not know. Keep that in mind, it will come up again later.

And that, as they say, was that. I should have been happy, but I felt a keen sense of disappointment and annoyance, as though I had been shortchanged somehow. It was as though Claudius had kicked the bucket from natural causes shortly after Hamlet's return to Elsinore, Gertrude had spilled the beans, the Ghost had gone on to his eternal reward, and the melancholy prince had ascended smoothly to the throne. It would have been a good outcome if you were Hamlet, Ophelia, Polonius, Rosencranz, Guildenstern, or any of the other casualties-- but the average Globe Theatre patron would have demanded his money back, and rightly so.

In the event, I had virtually no opportunities for clever quips or daring stunts. I had anticipated a battle royal with the forces of evil, a convoluted contest with plenty of harrowing twists and turns. I figured that I would be helpless at some point, facing sure death, and young Stymie would come up with a bold and clever solution, as he so often did in the "Our Gang" comedies. That would have been good storytelling. But no. Not even close. I thought perhaps one of my little band would be killed, making the whole business that much more poignant. And if you think that's callous of me, you obviously haven't noticed that virtually nobody in these memoirs ever stays dead for long.

West was out there somewhere. I figured he'd turn up again sooner or later. I was right, and it was the former. My next encounter with him was, in fact, just around the corner.

Anonymoushka disappeared, but I'd also be seeing her again very soon.

Crusher Cranium, wherever he was, drew no more attention to himself for a few months. I did not know at the time whether his mysterious liberators had been remnants of the White Centipede's organization or something else entirely. I would, in due course, find out.

The State Police found the small airfield where Almanac had been keeping his dirigibles. The Army took charge of them and moved them to a military airfield near Zenith. The government also took charge of a well-fortified laboratory where Almanac had been busy making more giant, invisible, unkillable monsters out of people. I wasn't happy about that, and resolved to covertly destroy the place at some point in the near future-- just to be on the safe side. Not that I don't trust our government, but I don't trust our government.

Stymie Beard was finally returned to his family and career. He went back to California on a train, with Patience and Prudence as volunteer bodyguards. I saw him off at the station and promised him a part in the sequel to "Blood of the Centipede," if William Randolph Hearst should choose to perpetrate such an abomination. Film historians, of course, know exactly what happened with that, so I need not go into it here.

And that, dear friends, is my story. If you have noticed any contradictions, omissions, or perilous leaps of logic, keep in mind that I am 105 years old.

***

EPILOGUE

A few days later, I was back at my headquarters, bent on a little relaxation.

"Miss Earhart phoned here and left you a message," J. Alfred Prufrock informed me, as I was making myself comfortable in an armchair with the latest edition of the Zenith Orator. "She told me to tell you to expect her at any time. She is looking into one or two matters that might interest you, she said."

"Excellent," I said. "After what I've been through, it will be a pleasure to see her. Actually, it would be a pleasure even if I hadn't been through anything at all."

"You're quite fond of her, aren't you, sir?"

"You would not be wrong in saying so. Be sure and lay in plenty of anything she might need or want, whatever those things might be."

Proofy went on his way and I opened up the newspaper and started reading. An item on an inside page caught my attention. It was a reprint from Monday's London Times, and it went like this:


MR. S. HOLMES

News was received in London this morning of the death of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the celebrated consulting detective, at the age of 79. According to his friend and physician, Dr. John H. Watson, Mr. Holmes passed away on Sunday after a protracted illness, at his home on the Sussex Downs.

Mr. Holmes was born in London in 1854 and was educated at Oxford and Cambridge. In 1881 he established a practice in London as "the world's first consulting detective," and soon became known for his brilliant and unorthodox solutions to the most perplexing of crimes. In this capacity, he frequently worked alongside the police. He became famous in the last century through the efforts of the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who collaborated with Mr. Holmes' friend and partner, the aforementioned Dr. Watson, on a series of biographical books and magazine articles based upon the detective's more notable cases. Mr. Holmes himself, in addition to numerous monographs on a wide variety of subjects, published his magnum opus, The Whole Art Of Detection, in 1926.

Mr. Holmes retired from active practice in 1903, at the relatively young age of 49, and took up residence on the Sussex Downs. After his retirement, he became an avid beekeeper, authoring a specialized apiculturist handbook under the title Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen.

Mr. Holmes was preceded in death by his parents, Siger and Violet Holmes, and his brother, Mr. Mycroft Holmes. Another brother, Sherrinford Holmes, failed to return home from a mountain-climbing expedition to Switzerland in 1865, and is believed to have perished, along with the other members of his party, in an avalanche.

***

I felt a pang. I had always wanted to meet the Great Detective, but had never gotten around to making it happen. And now it would never be.

That's what I thought at the time, anyhow. But I've been wrong before.

I was about to clip the obituary out for one of my scrapbooks when Proofy came bustling back into the room.

"Sir!" he said, his voice betraying some excitement, "there was a bulletin over the wireless just now. It seems that a bank robbery is in progress at Zenith First National Bank and Trust."

"And?" I said languidly. "Zenith does have a police force, you know, and it does them good to earn their pay every now and then. Builds character. I cannot be expected to do everything for them pro bono. You'll notice I don't hand out traffic citations, nor do I raid gambling parlors. Of course, neither do the cops in this town, but that's hardly the point. I..."

"Sir," he interrupted, "they're saying that one of the robbers is John Dillinger!"

"Well!" I exclaimed, fairly leaping from my seat. "Why didn't you say so? I'm on the case, Proofy! Oh, please go ahead and start getting supper ready. This shouldn't take long at all, and I may work up an appetite."

At the time, I believed that. Dillinger may have been able to run roughshod over hick sheriffs out in the boondocks, but he would soon learn that the Black Centipede was something else again. I embarked on this new errand with a sense of self-confidence that only the weak and timid would call hubris. I'd have Dillinger in the city jail in less than an hour.

I'm glad I didn't bet any money on that...


FIN


What happens next? Find out in Black Centipede Confidential, on sale NOW!!!
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Centipede-Confidential-Chuck-Miller-ebook/dp/B00SP5W6QI/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1&qid=1422837327

A WORD FROM VIONNA VALIS

THE KINDLE EDITION of  VIONNA AND THE VAMPIRES IS JUST $2.99!

GET IT HERE:

http://www.amazon.com/Vionna-Vampires-Moriarty-Lord-Book-ebook/dp/B00IXX9OB2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409486417&sr=8-1&keywords=vionna+and+the+vampires

A few months ago, Chuck Miller allowed me to write a piece for his blog about a book called Vionna and the Vampires, which is all about an unbelievable experience that I, Vionna Vernet Valis, and my best friend and partner, Mary Jane Kelly, had. Well, now that book has now been published, and is now available on Amazon, and now I'm back to talk about it some more.

When I brought up the idea of doing another post, Chuck Miller, who in my view has too high an opinion of himself, said he didn't think it would be necessary, he could talk about the book all by himself. We went back and forth on this for a while, and I pointed out three things to him:

1.) The stuff the book is all about, the whole thing with Professor Moriarty, happened to me and Mary, not to him.

2.) Chuck Miller did not totally write the book all by himself, in spite of the fact that he put his name on the cover. The story was written by me in my own words, as a first-hand experiencer of the events. This is what is known as "first person narration," which means it is being told by the person to whom it happened to. None of this happened to Chuck Miller. He was nowhere to be seen when we went through all this stuff, as far as I can recall. While me and Mary were fighting off gross, disgusting vampires, Chuck Miller was probably asleep or playing on the internet or bragging to somebody about something he had supposedly done at some point in the distant past.

After I brought those two things to his attention, he went into some bullcrap about how that's the way the publishing business works, and that he deserved to have his name on it because blah-blah-blah, and I was being an ingrate and that him taking some of the credit would keep me from developing too much of an ego, and that I ought to thank him for taking my sloppy manuscripts and turning them into something readable, like that was some big deal or something, and that he had to make like a hundred corrections on every page, which I don't even believe is true. I told him my manuscripts weren't the least bit sloppy, and he hardly had to do any work on them at all, and did he think I was some kind of an idiot? He didn't answer that, but he said the bottom line was that I would never have gotten anything published at all without his help. So I said, no, the actual bottom line is something else, and that was my third thing:

3.) I told him that if he didn't let me write a post, I'd stop sending him any manuscripts at all, and so would my brother Jack, who works with Doctor Unknown Junior, and also the Black Centipede, who is very sympathetic to my cause. Then he'd have to make up stories all by himself, and then he could see just how many people would bother even looking at them, much less paying money for them. I mean, if he's this big-deal writer and has this wonderful imagination, how come he never did anything with it until the Black Centipede started sending him those case reports? So, there was that, and there was also something else. I had what I think is called leverage to use on him. Because, you see, I had gotten my hands on some short stories he wrote when he was in college-- never mind how I got them-- and I told him if that was the kind of stuff he wrote by himself, he could just go to it, and I wished him luck. Which I didn't, of course. I was being sarcastic. 

He cursed at me and threatened me for about fifteen minutes, but I just sat there and smiled, and when I got a chance to put a word in edgewise, as the saying goes, I told him I was prepared to post some of his crappy old stories all over Facebook and everywhere else if he didn't quit being so ugly to me. Well, he changed his tune pretty quickly and became all apologetic and everything, and started calling me "Miss Valis," and saying "Please" and "thank you," and so on, and the end result is that I am writing this piece, and he is going to post it exactly as it is, or else I absolutely will post those stories, starting with this one about a girl with hairy legs that is so terrible he'd never be able to show his face in public again if people saw it.
 
As for the book, I have to say that it is probably the best and most exciting book I have ever read in my life, even if I did write it myself, which I did, and I didn't make a hundred mistakes on every page. Maybe five or six at most, and they wouldn't have made hardly any difference at all, even if they were left in there. The story has so much fantastic stuff in it that I almost don't even know where to begin. There are vampires, there is the actual Professor Moriarty, there is the actual Sherlock Holmes-- not that Iron Man guy, Morton Downey Junior, that was in those movies-- there is a crappy Halloween party, there is a comic book geek guy, there are girls with really huge boobs, there's a giant talking turtle, there is Dracula and Jack the Ripper, there is mystery and intrigue and time travel and new words I found in the dictionary and a bunch more stuff on top of that, which I can't even go into here because it would be what is called "spoilers," and I have too much integrity to do that.

It's better that you see it for yourself, which you can do as soon as you buy the book.

Another thing about it is that it's the first part of a trilogy. Trilogies usually consist of three books, and Vionna and the Vampires is the first one in the Moriarty, Lord of the Vampires trilogy. Moriarty was around for a long time, and he caused trouble for more people than just me and Mary. The second volume, "Black Centipede Confidential," tells about the time in 1933 when Moriarty was goofing around in the city of Zenith, trying to find Jack the Ripper's Analytical Engine, and pulled all kinds of horrible, dangerous stunts, and how the Black Centipede put a stop to his foolishness. That one will come out later. I have not read it myself, but the Black Centipede has told me all about it, and it sounds very cool, and will probably be almost as good as Vionna and the Vampires, which is now available on Amazon, by the way, and well worth the price, even including shipping.

The third book will be The Return of Little Precious, which is all about my brother, Jack Christian, and Doctor Dana Unknown, and their dealings with Moriarty approximately one decade ago. I'm in that one, too, even though I can't remember any of it, so I can't really comment. Mary's not in it at all. Which is not unfair, since she was in just about every chapter of Blood of the Centipede, and I hardly showed up at all. I am practically the star of Vionna and the Vampires, though, and I do all kinds of fantastic things, like for example time-traveling  back to 1888 and solving a perplexing case with none other than Sherlock Holmes himself! I am absolutely serious, you can read it for yourself in black and white, as they say, when you buy a copy of Vionna and the Vampires, which happens to be available on Amazon right now. In addition, I learned some totally unbelievable things about myself, which will just blow you away when you find out what they are, I am not kidding.

Mary does some stuff also. She was kind of snippy with me during some of the events described in the book, and still hasn't admitted that I was right about certain things. But we're not mad at each other anymore, even though I would have a right to still be mad at Mary a little bit, if I was still mad, which I'm not.

Oh, and speaking of Blood of the Centipede, our new book, Vionna and the Vampires, which is now available for purchase on Amazon, by the way, features what you might call the "flip sides" of a couple of scenes in Blood. You should probably buy both books so you can see what I mean. But if you can't afford both of them, just buy Vionna and the Vampires. You can go to the link right down there and do that. You won't be sorry, I swear to God. 

And it has this really gorgeous cover painting by Jeff Hayes. I'm the one on the left.

Thank you.

Yours Truly,
Vionna V. Valis
World's Greatest Psychic Detective, For Real 



BUY THE BOOK HERE: www.amazon.com/Vionna-Vampires-Moriarty-Lord-Book/dp/1495948617/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392691882&sr=1-1