Fantasmagoria Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  *Map

  (PART ONE) The Brink

  (ONE) Garden of the Dead

  (TWO) The Indescribable Peace of Impending Doom

  (THREE) A Radioactive Man Has No Friends

  *The Kingpin

  (FOUR) Spit or Swallow

  (FIVE) The Tears of Gods

  (SIX) At the Pleasure of the Damned

  *The Heavy

  (SEVEN) A Cackle of Murderlings

  (EIGHT) The Well of the Night Runs Dry

  (NINE) A Fate Worse Than Death

  *Street Art

  (TEN) The Automatic Killer

  (ELEVEN) A Dangerous Game

  (TWELVE) The Canyons of the Afternoon

  *Newspaper Clipping

  (THIRTEEN) Attack of the Venom Wasps

  (FOURTEEN) Grandma Was a Genocidal Fascist

  (FIFTEEN) The Killing Time

  *Main Attraction

  (SIXTEEN) Mortiscience

  (SEVENTEEN) The Perils of Domesticated Minotaurs

  (EIGHTEEN) An Idiot with a Gun

  *Who is Pimpernel?

  (INTERLUDE) Curse of the White Woman

  (PART TWO) It Came From

  (NINETEEN) Assault with an Instrument of Learning

  (TWENTY) Enter the Dragon

  *Travel Poster

  (TWENTY-ONE) What Lurks under the Bed

  (TWENTY-TWO) A Drag Off of Death

  (TWENTY-THREE) The Stink of a Nine-Fingered Asshole

  *The Old Arcade

  (TWENTY-FOUR) Handshakes in the Dark

  (TWENTY-FIVE) Shadow of the Samurai

  *Attack of the Wereninjas

  (TWENTY-SIX) Gilbert Tubers vs. the Wereninjas of the Assassin Cult

  (TWENTY-SEVEN) Unicorn Blues

  *Wall of Skulls

  (TWENTY-EIGHT) The Chamber of Ten Thousand Skulls

  (TWENTY-NINE) A Song to Dismember Me By

  (THIRTY) Here Lies

  *Recruitment Poster

  (THIRTY-ONE) Bigger Problems

  (THIRTY-TWO) Kraxus Is Coming

  *The Destroyer

  (THIRTY-THREE) Escape from Midwitch

  (THIRTY-FOUR) The Terror from Beyond

  *Advertisement

  (THIRTY-FIVE) Rise of the Biodroid

  (THIRTY-SIX) Out of the Feral Planet

  (THIRTY-SEVEN) I Am Come

  (THIRTY-EIGHT) The Clock & the Infinite Clockmaker

  Note to the Reader

  (AFTERLUDE) The Creature from Dire Swamp

  The End

  Appendix: Gallery of Art

  Deleted Chapter: Gilbert in the Old Sewers

  Word Vomit

  Copyright Info

  For my parents, Richard and Marilyn,

  Thanks for everything.

  I’m your greatest fan.

  (ONE) Garden of the Dead

  It was a fitting place for man-eaters, murderous and silent and stocked with the dead of a hundred generations. It was a fitting place to bring the departed, even those still on two feet.

  “Damn, this is heavy,” Cecil grunted as the bag slipped out of his hands and fell with a splash. The big man grabbed his end of the large, limp sack and, with a heave, helped his scowling companion lift it over the next knot in the ravine. It was doubly hard in the dark and rain, and as they stumbled through ankle-high water, it bubbled and belched a foul odor.

  “What the hell is in here?” Cecil had dragged the load most of the way himself, and he was starting to tire. It had been raining for days, and filth oozed from the cemetery. It pooled in foot-sized pits the pair had tracked from the car parked just past the gate all the way down to the small crevice that cut through earth. “Vernal?”

  “Dog food.”

  “Why are we bringing dog food all the way out here?” Cecil grunted and heaved again.

  The ravine was choked thick with knotted roots and ran crooked along the base of a shallow hill dotted with sagging granite headstones and marble statues with their arms raised to the sky in silent warning.

  “What is this place?” Cecil was stout with thin eyes and a fat lip. He wiped the rain from his face with his large hands. His left cheek was raked in thin, nearly healed scratches. His knuckles were well scabbed.

  His companion was a stump, just over five feet with a stocky chest braced by two stubby legs like the twin barrels of a sawed-off shotgun. Vernal pointed. “There.”

  A concrete slab and the yawning maw of a stone mausoleum plugged the end of the ditch. Dead vegetation hung from the opening like strips of flesh. Its open throat was deep and black and disappeared under the hill, whose sole purpose seemed to be to keep the place buried.

  There was a distant rumble of thunder.

  “Climb up there and help me lift this up.” Vernal pointed with a fat finger to the concrete slab, which rose three feet over the crevice.

  Cecil looked up at the worn stone arch that capped the entryway. The writing wasn’t visible under the dead vines and creepers. “Why do I have to go first?”

  Vernal stood straight. His eyes were round and his nose flat, as if he’d been punched repeatedly. His last shag of hair ran from the crown of his skull down the back of his head while his harelip barely covered his chipped teeth. Everything about him was filed down—everything, that is, except his forehead, which his face wore like a hat. “Cecil, how much do you weigh?” His vocal cords grated his voice like cheese. Every word was rumbling diesel.

  “What?”

  “It’s a simple question.”

  “Uh, ’bout two-fifty I guess.”

  “And how much do you think I weigh?”

  “Aw, come on, Vernal.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know, maybe a buck-sixty.”

  Vernal pointed to the slab. “If I climb up there, do you think I’ll be able to lift this bag?”

  Cecil looked up at the entrance again, cold and dark. “Right.” He grabbed a fistful of dead vine and pulled.

  “Dammit, Cecil.” Vernal quivered. “I’m soaking wet and covered in mud. You can clear the verge later.”

  “Right,” Cecil repeated. He leapt onto the slab and bent to grab the front of the heavy bag. Vernal did his best to push from the bottom, but it was water-logged—swollen and fat like a tick’s butt—and hard to move.

  Cecil pulled with a roar and hefted the bag over the concrete lip. The floor was wet and he slipped and fell on his ass. As the bag collapsed on the floor, something rolled out, and the stubby man snatched it quick.

  “What was that?” Cecil asked.

  “What was what?” Vernal gargled.

  “That!” Cecil pointed at the bulge in his companion’s pocket.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Was that a dick? That looked like a dick.”

  “What are you talking about?

  “I saw it!” Cecil protested. “It was a dick! A big, fat cock. It fell out and you picked it up.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “You must have been mistaken.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Vernal, I wasn’t mistaken.” Cecil made quotes in the air. “Oh shit, is that blood?”

  The water-logged bag lay like a leaky bladder on the concrete, sagging as its weight squeezed the water from its innards. Swirling trails of crimson flowed with the water over the lip of the floor and down into the ravine.

  Cecil stepped back. “Is… is this a bag of penises?”

  “No.” Vernal climbed into the mausoleum and shook his hands dry. “Well, not only penises.”

  “You said it was dog food.”

  “It is,” came a throaty voice from the dark.

  Cecil spun around.

&nbs
p; “You’re late.” A figure stood in shadow.

  “Yes,” Vernal replied. “The weather and all.”

  “Of course.” A jackal-headed man stepped forward. He walked on two legs and wore a fine linen shirt, silk vest, and trousers. He had a ragged top hat but no shoes. The fur on his feet and hands was bushy, while that about his neck was thin and gray. The spotted hyena on all fours behind him snickered and bore its teeth.

  “Jackals,” Cecil breathed heavy and stepped back. He got goose bumps. “Vernal, what the fuck?”

  The jackal looked at the stunted man. “You must be Vernal Wort.” He extended a long-fingered paw.

  “At last we meet.” Vernal glanced down the black corridor at the greenish glint of animal eyes reflecting the faint light. He could hear growling and shuffling as he reached into his pocket and produced the stray member. He threw it to the hyena, which tore at the head. Vernal watched as it chewed the spongy insides with its back teeth. “Fresh,” he said. “Or reasonably so.”

  “Oh God.” Cecil retreated farther. One hand drifted in front of his pants.

  “I can assume the phallus came from the eunuch’s temple. Where did you get the rest of it?”

  “The rest of what?” Cecil asked.

  The jackal nodded to the bag, which was sliding back over the lip.

  Vernal grit his teeth. “Cecil.”

  “Huh?”

  “Get the bag,” Vernal sneered at his companion as the bag slipped over the edge and fell with a splash.

  “Right.” Cecil looked back at the jackal-man and his pet before hopping into the mud.

  “I have my sources,” Vernal said. “All you need to know is there’s plenty more where that came from.”

  “And it doesn’t bother you, Therian, trading in man-flesh?”

  “No more than it bothers you eating it, aminal. And I’m no Therian.”

  The jackal smiled. The corners of his lips turned up to his eyes, far wider than any human could smile. His teeth were white and sharp and shone even in the faint light. “Such disdain for the Empire. Aminals, at least, are proud of their race.”

  “Are we doing business, or discussing politics?”

  “Well, I can’t very well discuss politics with them.” He nodded to the eyes in the dark. “Or are you only here to feed the dogs?”

  Vernal stayed silent.

  The jackal stepped forward and leaned close. He was two heads taller than Vernal. “Jackals have excellent hearing, Mr. Wort. And we can smell a lie.”

  Vernal didn’t try to hide his fear. There was no point. The jackals could hear his heart beat faster, could smell him sweat. “You have something for me?” he asked.

  “Our deal was for five hundred pounds of man-meat. There isn’t more than two hundred in that bag.”

  “Well, I didn’t come with just the bag, now did I?”

  The jackal-man turned to watch Cecil struggling with the sopping load.

  “He’s not quite three hundred pounds,” Vernal said, “but then I figured there’s a probably premium for freshness.”

  The jackal studied Vernal for a moment. “I can see where you earned your nickname, Mr. Wort.”

  “Call me Vernal.”

  “You know what we will do to him, don’t you?”

  “Nope,” Vernal replied. “And I don’t want to. I already know what he did to two little girls last week, and that’s enough nightmare to last a year.”

  The jackal looked at the scratches on Cecil’s face and the scrapes on his knuckles. “I see.”

  “No. You don’t. But I’m trying to forget it, so I’m not going to explain.”

  The jackal nodded to his colleagues, who erupted from the dark, whooping and howling, and descended on Cecil, who didn’t have time to turn. He screamed, and kept screaming as vice-strong jaws sunk their teeth into his body and pulled him down the dark hall in spastic tugs.

  “Vernal, please!” He begged as he slid by, arm outstretched. His dense, muscled body smeared blood in its wake.

  “Save his face for me,” the jackal called to his pack.

  Vernal held out his hand. “My payment.”

  The jackal reached into his vest pocket and produced a brass key, long and tarnished and studded with movable teeth like a combination lock. Vernal reached out but the jackal-man pulled back. “Why is this key so important?”

  Vernal said nothing. He waited.

  “Forget that the Empire would boil you alive for this, publicly. What about Pimpernel?”

  “Who?” Vernal feigned.

  “Erasmus Pimpernel. You outbid him for this key.”

  “Oh?”

  “He offered a small fortune. But as you intelligently surmised, Imperial money is just paper to us.”

  “Your concern is touching, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Vernal held out his hand again. “My payment, please.”

  The jackal bared his teeth and handed the key to the little man. “As you wish.”

  “If you’re so worried about this fellow Pimpernel, why didn’t you just give the key to him?”

  “Well, you know what they say about enemies of friends with enemies.”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Vernal wrapped the key in cloth, reached into his pants, and stuck it between his ass cheeks. “I don’t have friends,” he said with a grunt.

  A long, gurgling scream echoed from the dark and faded into a slobbering moan, a blubbering, begging lament.

  “I can see that.” The jackal licked his lips. As his tongue swung around his narrow muzzle, a drop of saliva fell to the ground. “I must confess, I’d considered eating you. But any man who isn’t afraid of Erasmus Pimpernel . . .”

  “Frankly,” Vernal climbed down into the ravine. “I’m more worried about my poor sister.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Yeah.” Vernal turned. “Last week, her two little girls were killed, and now,” Vernal nodded down the dark tunnel, “her husband seems to have gone missing. Good day.”

  “Good day, Mr. Wort.”

  (TWO) The Indescribable Peace of Impending Doom

  Jack Fulcrum was waiting to die.

  It had been difficult at first. Nobody really wants to die. But for gunslingers, who expect a violent end, “natural causes” seems an ignoble departure. It was better to get shot in the head, or maybe the back, like a soldier in the line of duty, than to suffer a slow and insidious creep. That was for bankers and politicians and patsies, who always died gasping for breath in some hospital bed surrounded by machines and the sucking greed of their loved ones.

  But the more he thought about it, the more Jack realized the truth. He deserved it. It wouldn’t right any wrongs, but it would prevent him from committing any more, and that seemed like a good thing. It glazed his vile demise with an aura of justice. And so Jack settled into the last weeks of a long life of violence with a peace he had never known.

  Most days, that meant sitting at The Dive reading the paper or watching the world pass and waiting for his silent stalker to catch him. He liked to think of it as a noble cancer, and when he felt particularly weak, like today, he would lean back in his chair—the special reinforced one the guys kept for him by the window—and close his eyes and wait for the end.

  But this wasn’t most days, and as he sat there, eyes shut, he felt a small tap on his hand. A greasy-haired child had come to deliver a message about her friend and her friend’s dad and about the mean things he did, and Jack figured, shit, what’s one more?

  An hour later, his final, indescribable peace ended in a stale apartment on the third floor of a quiet building. The door was open and Jack walked in and saw Nero LaMana, the kingpin, the Butcher of Battle Street, sitting on the couch flanked by a small army of well-suited henchmen, including two minotaurs and a banshee.

  LaMana held up his hands as soon as Jack opened the door. “Before anybody does anything crazy, I just wanna talk.”

  Jack squinted. Nero wasn’t much of a talker, but he was a big man, almost as
tall as Jack, and bald. He sported a black-and-white-striped suit coat with matching tie. He looked like he had just come from a funeral. Jack looked at all the goons. Maybe the funeral was still to come.

  LaMana stood. “You wouldn’t’ve come if I just asked, Jack.”

  That much was true. And then it made sense, how the street urchin knew where to send him, why there was no one in the foyer, why the door to the apartment was unlocked. LaMana had brought him deep into the slums near the Old Arcade. That close to the Black Hand, it was no man’s land for the syndicates. Smart.

  Jack looked around the room and started counting. “Four . . . five . . . six . . .” He pointed at each of LaMana’s thugs. “You need sixteen guys to have a chat?”

  LaMana smiled. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure it was fuckin’ enough. I mean, you’re ‘Blackjack’ Fulcrum, the most prolific hit man in history. My mouth to Goyen’s ears, you’ve killed more people than Kraxus.”

  Jack scowled.

  “You’re a fuckin’ legend. And you know what?” He lowered his voice. “My guys’ll probably kill me for saying this, but it’s damned well deserved, too. How long have your boss and I been trading blows, Jack?”

  Jack shrugged. He couldn’t remember a time when LaMana and Pimpernel weren’t kicking each other in the balls.

  Pimpernel. Jack clenched his fists.

  “Exactly. And in all that time, how is it that cocksucker didn’t have you wipe my gang clear off the planet?”

  “He never asked.”

  “Ha!” LaMana pointed at Jack in jest. “He never asked, Jack, because he’d knew you’d never do it. Am I wrong? Tell me I’m wrong. You can’t, because it’s true.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I used to want you workin’ for me. Then I wanted you dead.” The kingpin paced across the faded rug in the middle of the room. “Fuck,” he nodded. “I really wanted you dead.”

  “Seems like you tried a few times.”

  “Yeah, but no one will take a hit on you anymore. Look at that arm.” Nero nodded to Jack’s right, his draw arm. “The Jackrabbit, the fastest gun in the world.” LaMana scowled at the void under Jack’s trench coat. “Where’s Rosa?”

  “Gone.” Jack was unarmed. Sixteen men. He realized he should never have given up on a violent death.