Category Archives: Gothic

Carriers VIII-IX

January 30, 2024Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionCarriers, Crime Fiction, fiction, Gothic, Mark DuCharme, Plague, Pulp Fiction, thriller, Vampires, writingNuallain House, Publishers

by Mark DuCharme

-VIII-

“You’re late,” Waycross blurted, testily. He was the Interim Assistant Deputy Director of Transportation— that is, of transporters like me. I never met anyone higher up than Waycross. He felt it, too. He was like a petulant king.

I looked at my watch. I was about a quarter-hour late or so, I was surprised to learn.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I had a carrier incident while off-duty in the middle of the night, and I thought I should try to get the cargo to the facility directly, and thought I could do that and still make it back here on time, but I misjudged the time terribly. I’m so horribly sorry, sir.”

“Well,” he paused, “don’t let it happen again.” Then he huffed away, just as testily as before, but perhaps a bit incensed at his own uncharacteristic show of relative mercy.

I noticed the New Man several feet away, looking stealthily toward me and observing— observing the whole time, with a most curious and furtive glee.

The New Man was sinister. I felt uneasy in his presence, and so tried to avoid him. There was something odd about him, the way he’d so suddenly replaced Hank, and the silence about it, the whispers, as if nothing had happened at all, as if Hank had never been. And the New Man always seemed to be turning up suddenly at the wrong time, looking about stealthily, behind one’s back, over one’s shoulder, as if he were studying you, as if he wanted to learn your private business, as if he wanted to learn to be you. I half suspected him of being a spy for management. Maybe, it now occurred to me, he was a spy for this Thorne.

I didn’t intend to let myself be late again, but neither could I make much sense of all that had recently occurred. Then I remembered the packet Gruber had left me. I reached into my coat and felt that it was still in my breast pocket. I suddenly became more curious about it. I mean, here was I, who had been fearing that old man— or rather, his remains— and I’d been carrying his final testament, of sorts, the whole time. And why me? I was just a neighbor. Sure, I’d drunk his brandy and listened to his ravings on occasion, but we weren’t close, or so I judged. Why would he have made a point of leaving this for my eyes alone? Why would he have told Ana about it, and why did she feel it was important (if she felt anything at all) that I should get it— especially in that very strange moment when we’d just burst in upon her old daddy’s death scene? What strange jumble of thoughts rambled through her mind at that time, out of which she determined that this was the one thing she wanted to be sure not to forget? It’s not like she remembered it a week later and slipped it under my apartment door; no, she made a point of giving it to me then. Something was mysterious about it, alright. Yet I had no time to look into it now; a full day’s work lay ahead of me.

Must I confess how my curiosity began to grow and fester over the course of that day’s labors, and how my lack of a full night’s sleep only seemed to compound my general state of confusion?

Finally, after endless hours, the sun began its slow descent, and I, after having deposited my cargo, began to make my way home also. I knew as soon as I got there that I would want to read Gruber’s packet. And so I hurried.

When I finally entered my apartment, the night now having fully descended upon the city, I tossed Gruber’s envelope upon the table and removed my coat. I was hungry, but even more so was I curious, so I grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator, stuck a frozen dinner in the microwave, and sat down with the packet that had captivated my thoughts for the better part of that strange day.

I ripped open the yellowed envelope and removed the sheets of folded paper and another sealed packet that had been inside the first. When I read the contents, it became clear to me that Gruber had thought more highly of our “friendship” than I myself.

Dear Johnny,
By the time you read this, I may be dead. That’s how things go in times like these. I’ll try to explain more about that later. Forgive me if I can’t explain it all. There are some things I am about to tell you that defy reason or virtue.
On the last night you came to visit, Johnny, I could sense your skepticism, so I didn’t want to go on about all this. But nevertheless, I feel it’s important to tell you, because if I’m right, my life is in real danger, and yours is too.
I mentioned one Artemas Thorne that night. It didn’t seem like you’d heard of him. Nevertheless, he’s a very important man in this town. Some say, the most important. But I told you, or I tried to tell, that he is very, very dangerous. You must be on your guard!
Why he’s so dangerous will take some explaining. You probably already think me a little crazy, Johnny, but if you don’t, you surely will after you have finished reading what follows. I can assure you, though, that I am in full possession of my mental faculties, despite my age, even as I imagine that my assurance will not matter much to you, my dear friend. Nevertheless, because your own soul is at stake, as well as mine, I must try at least to convince you, however quixotic that labor may prove.
Johnny, strange things are going on in this city— strange and wicked things. Why do you think that all those bodies have to be brought to the abandoned warehouse before dusk? What is it your employers are afraid of? Have you ever thought about that?
Johnny— you’re smarter than you pretend to be, but if I can speak frankly, my friend, your problem is that you’re incurious.
Johnny, have you ever heard about the dead returning to life? I don’t mean to life exactly, but to some pale semblance of it. When this happens, some call those returned— those whom I believe you call “carriers”— the undead.
Johnny, please bear with me. I am not as feeble-minded as I think you think I am. I am not feeble-minded at all, in fact. But when I say this, I know you will not believe me.
Nevertheless, I persist, because you are my last hope. My daughter is lost to me. I know few people young enough, strong enough, to carry on this fight. You are both young and strong, Johnny, and if you will but believe, I know that you can see this through— and do what must be done.
You have received the calling card, by now, of Artemas Thorne, I trust. No, it’s not I who put it there! I understand your skeptical nature, Johnny— in many ways, I am a skeptic myself, as I’ve tried to stress to you, though it seems to have fallen on deaf ears. In any case, perhaps by the time you read this, you might be a bit more curious about him than when we last spoke.
I am a historian by training, if not by profession, as you well know. I have done a fair amount of historical research in my time. I have looked into this Artemas Thorne— for reasons that may become clear to you, but which for now it is difficult to fully explain. In any event, there is no record of a person of that name, man or woman (for in fact, it could be either) ever being born on this continent. And I’ve scoured all the data. I find that rather curious.
The other curious thing is that the only record— again, on this continent— of a person by that name, in any variant spelling, is of a colonist who arrived here on one of the early ships. A birth record has been found for that Artemas Thorne near London, but no death record for that person, born in 1596, has been located. Very strange.
Johnny, I am convinced that the Artemas Thorne who lives here and now and the Artemas Thorne born in 1596 are one and the same! He is one of the undead, Johnny— in fact, he is their leader, of sorts. If I am right about this— and I am almost certain that I am— then it is he who brought this plague upon our city. He is a very wicked man— or should I say, creature?
You’ll want proof. I can offer none, at least until catastrophe strikes. But if you ever wake up in the middle of the night, full of restless dreams, do not look out your south-facing window if you lack courage.
My hope and purpose in writing posthumously (should my guess prove correct, and my daughter, in that event, keep her word) is that you be awakened to this danger and act swiftly, as one should.

Most sincerely,
Augustus Aloysius Gustave “Jim” Gruber

PS: I am enclosing a second sealed letter in this first. I ask that you not read it unless and until you become convinced that I am right. This second letter will instruct you on what to do to rid this city of its plague and of the demon who brought it upon us.
PPS: One more thing, Johnny. My daughter Analeise may call upon you some evening, if she already hasn’t. Don’t let her see this letter or the enclosed one! If I’m right about all of these things, Johnny, she is dangerous too.

I was most perplexed by this strange missive. On the one hand, Gruber here sounds madder than ever before; on the other, he makes a strange sort of sense.

I grew upset. The events of the last few days had cast an unmistakable pall over things. It seemed as if I’d been drawn into some chain of circumstance that led I knew not where, and over which I had no control. I didn’t know what to do or think. I began to wish that I’d told Ana to go the hell away and gone back to sleep. I began to wish that I hadn’t knocked on Gruber’s door that night. O, what to believe?

I finished my meal, then drank another beer, then another. I went to bed at the usual time, but slept fitfully. I would have gladly settled for troubled dreams.

-IV-

I couldn’t very easily get to sleep, and when I did it was only a feeble approximation of rejuvenating repose. I did wake fully, though, around midnight. Old Gruber’s letter had haunted me, chasing back innocence’s rest. But when I glanced up at the clock and saw that it was only 11:58 P.M., I felt despair. And then, those words of Gruber’s came back to me: if you ever wake up in the middle of the night, full of restless dreams, do not look out your south-facing window if you lack courage. Gruber had been crazy, but he could be right about some things. My apartment does have a south-facing window, for example. But what could I see from there, and why would it require courage? The main thing visible from there is that old tower.

I have remarked earlier in my tale upon the unusual construction of the building in which my quarters are located— how the edifice is essentially an old Victorian house that has been added on to over the many decades hence. This is so, and the newer appendages are sometimes odd and ill-suited to the original components of the structure.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the tower. It is probably at least five or six stories in height— easily the tallest edifice for blocks around. It is constructed of mortared stones. It looks rather more like a European structure than one erected on this continent. In truth, it resembles a medieval tower more than anything post-Victorian, and so it fits right in with the odd hodgepodge of architectural styles that is the hallmark of the assemblage I call home. There are windows in that tower (fairly narrow), but there is no door at all outside its circular structure. It is said that an old door that no one ever uses— one that, coincidentally, is to be found just to the left as I exit my quarters and approach the main stairwell— actually leads to a hallway which, in turn, leads into that tower. But as I’ve said, that doorway is never used. It doesn’t seem that anyone has the key. And I have never seen lights in the tower’s somewhat narrow rectangular windows. In truth, I think that no one lives there, nor has anyone for at least as long as I have occupied my quarters.

The more I thought about it, the less sense Gruber’s statement made. You see, if I look out that window at night— or in day, for that matter— just about the only thing I can see is that tower. Now why should that be so frightening?

Here, I suddenly thought to myself, here was a chance to prove Old Gruber the benign lunatic I always took him to be. I got out of bed at once and went to that window. Surely, I would need no courage, because surely all that would be visible would be that old, abandoned tower, the darkness that engulfed it, and perhaps some faint lights down the street. This was brilliant, I thought. Surely all this vague, uneasy feeling would be resolved at once, and I would turn and go right back to bed, and sleep there like a babe in comfort.

I should not need to tell you with what chagrin I had to admit to myself that Old Gruber knew exactly what he had been talking about. For there it was, out my window facing south, that stone phallic structure. And out of one of its narrow, rectangular windows, I saw emerge to my growing horror the figure of a man. Yes, it was unmistakable. But this man did not leap to his doom, nor make some plea to the unheeding night; no. This man, instead, emerged from that window and crawled— yes, that is the right word— he crawled down the side of that building, quite like a spider. He had dark hair and was slender, but not slight, of build. He was clad all in black or dark gray— I could not tell the difference by cloudy moonlight— and his long overcoat paid no more respect to the law of gravity than his body did. When this downward-crawling human arachnid arrived at the narrow window directly below the one he had emerged from, he entered abruptly, and with an insect-like and most inhuman agility. Then— and this is the strangest part— I could see him stand up in the lower chamber he had so unnaturally entered, and turn and face me suddenly— yes, me! He was clearly aware that I had been watching him, and even in the dim moonlight, I could yet detect a malevolent smile curl his lips.

I rushed from my window in horror. Had this all been a dream? No, it couldn’t have been! I was nowhere near a state of sleep conducive to dreams, much less any state of sleep. I was wide awake, yet what I saw struck mortal terror in me in a way no nightmare ever had, even as a little boy. No, this was all too real! And this thing— this spider-creature— was now aware of me, if he hadn’t been before. My blood chilled as I reflected on this new and dreadful development.

Next Time: The Letter Inside The Letter

Cheése Stands Alone XII

January 30, 2024Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionAirship Commander, Cheese Stands Alone, Dirigibles, Frida the Fearless, Lydia Cheése, Pax Victoriana, Phyllis Huldarsdottir, Pulp Fiction, SteampunkNuallain House, Publishers

by Phylis Huldarsdottir

Cast of Characters (Partial):

Captain Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”), Airship Commander for Aerosud, a luxury liner airship company based out of São Paulo in the Empire of Brazil, who is searching for her father, Commodore Jack Cheése, an outlaw and antigovernmental rabble rouser.

Professor Doctor Jean-Pierre Serre-Pain, proprietor of Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium, a traveling snake show, who has abducted Lydia to get her to pilot an illegal unregistered airship to HOAR (the Horn Of Africa Republic) on a mission of mercy in exchange for helping her find her father.

Serpina, a young girl who serves as Serre-Pain’s assistant and snake handler and who is also a psychic Vessel.

Vlady, an older bearlike man also in the employ of Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium and a traveling circus strongman Lydia recognizes from her past.

Pyare, a young man with dreams of being an airship pilot, and member of LBFDS (the League Bousculier Francaise Du Sud) helping Lydia and Serpina rendezvous with Serre-Pain and Vlady at an illegal airship.

Pax Victoriana, a period of peace imposed by the Clockwork Commonwealth and its enforcement arm, The Admiralty, dating from the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign to the present for a total of 180 years which includes the TSR (Temporal Shift Realignment) of 56 PV (1893 AD) after which Commonwealth calendars where recalibrated to reflect Her Royal Majesty’s peaceful rule (following the devastation of the first Pandem and its resurgence 30 years later as Pandem II).

Chief Inspector Karla Kola, head of the IOTA squad charged with capturing Commodore Jack Cheése and Lydia’s nemesis and pursuer.

Chapter XVII

The stone threshold led to the open door and the darkened interior of the public house. The air was close and smoky as Lydia Cheése stepped onto the roughhewn floor. The amber glow of lights, plasma based or bacterry powered, even some organic bougies illuminated wide tables and the chatter of voices of those around them. Delectable odors made her mouth water.

A large broad shouldered woman, fists to hips, blocked any further progress. Pyare spoke to her a few words in a local dialect. The woman’s eyes narrowed and reconsidered what Pyare had told her and what she was seeing, Lydia and Serpina looking very rough. She inclined her head in the direction of the kitchen and had them follow to an alcove nearby. There was a bench and a stool. From a doorway opposite, the large kitchen fireplace exuded heat. She addressed Pyare with a hand held out.

Pyare turned to Lydia, the hood of her burnoose still drawn close around her face, “She will feed us but we must pay. You have Victorines. Or better, the local currency. They are very suspicious of Victorians.”

Serpina stepped forward. “I have a few old francs.” She retrieved the bills from her wallet, handing them to the woman, and smiled. The woman’s severe demeanor softened and she smiled back as if entranced. She was older, with a pushed in face and large eyes, greying dark hair pulled together under a scarf. “Yes, I speak standard little. I was maid many years in Nouveau Old Orleans. I am Mira. Please sit. I will be back.”

Lydia’s eyes questioned Pyare. He seemed nervous. The murmur of voices from the main room of the Bear & Lion had quieted as the newcomers were silently scrutinized. Serpina sensed Pyare’s anxiety and stood close to him, in his shadow.

“Do you trust her?” Lydia had quickly scanned their environment. A large room occupied by a dozen or more people, eating, drinking, talking. It all seemed very congenial. Until they arrived. A few, men, were on their feet and moving around, some to an adjacent room that also appeared to be occupied.

“Of course. Once we crossed the threshold, the rules of the clan do not allow any harm to come to us. The food will be simple but good. It is once we leave here that I’m worried about. I see some very unfriendly faces at those tables.”

“I’d rather not worry about that on an empty stomach. They can’t all be hostile to us, can they?”

“They will be if they think we are police spies. Or worse, refugees.”

The woman named Mira returned with a large pot and three bowls which she set on a barrelhead nearby. Ladling out portions of murky stew she passed the bowls around. Lydia looked at the congealed brown and orange mass with certain revulsion. She was hungry, the smell was savory but unfamiliar. The thought of it passing through her mouth made her gag involuntarily. Pyare looked at her in surprise as both he and Serpina were already swallowing their first bites. Mira looked at her askance as if it were a comment on the dish.

Pyare nodded vigorously and pointed at the bowl so that the woman would understand that he thought it delectable. Serpina, as well, nodded her appreciations. “Mushrooms,” she said, her eyes widening. “Sausage!” Pyare chimed in.

Each word was like a stab in the gut, but after such reviews, how could she refuse, especially under the returned suspicious gaze of their hostess. She nudged a small portion from the bowl to her lips and past her teeth. A warm sensation flooded her mouth from the surprisingly rich texture of the morsel. It did not taste as unpleasant as it looked. There was a complexity to the flavors that she had sampled only in the most expensive restaurants in Rio Rio. This was not the same old remolded morselized biotein fare that was common throughout the Commonwealth, fauxfillets of fizsh and strings of rehydrated chibz, or ubiquitous biotein patty pazetree puffs sold in take outlets and automats everywhere. Except in the Massif, apparently. The first bite was followed by a second bite although she was uncertain what to do with the first bit of sausage. She closed her eyes and swallowed so that she could tell herself she had done so without looking.

It wasn’t long before Lydia was running a finger along the insides of the bowl to get every bit of the stew and unhesitatingly accepted the large stein of fermented broth proffered by an approving Mira. Lydia felt full as she had never felt before. And drowsy. If it hadn’t been for the commotion in the main room of the house, she would have drifted off to catch up on much needed sleep.

A man in a tilted hat repeated what he had just proclaimed. “It smells like destruction, I tell you!” He was a round man, tall, with shockingly blazing eyes and a large unruly white moustache overhanging his mouth. Another man seated near him took offense. “No, friend, it smells like good food and warm bodies, especially those of women!” His assertion was met with a few guffaws and a comradely “Hear, hear.”

Lydia stepped between them. “Let me show you mine.” She proffered the identification card with one hand and with the other placed the twin tips of the viper blade under his chin.

“It smells like an evil wind that bodes no good!” the round man continued.

“Maybe it’s a broken wind,” someone else offered to a chorus of laughter.

“He should know” offered another, “He’s a bag of wind. Blow back to your mountain hut, old man, and take your bitter nuts with you!”

“Yar, that he is! And always with the same complaint!” The tone was a little more aggressive. “You don’t belong here. Go back to your wallow!” The accusation had come from a man who had entered from the adjacent room. He was large with a shaggy head of mouse brown hair.

“Ruin! I can smell it in the air. The foul stench of annihilation!”

“Blame it on the wind. It’s blowing your stinking breath back in your face!” Another man in a great coat had stood up menacingly. “We don’t need your kind around here! You are stirring your disturbance in the wrong place!”

Lydia looked puzzled. She wasn’t certain what was happening. What had started as banter had turned abusive. She could tell by Pyare’s posture that he was on the brink of fight or flight. Only Serpina seemed unconcerned, a slight smile turning up the edges of her mouth.

“It is us, all of us, who bring this doom to ourselves. Not the Clockwork Commonwealth or its client states, or the sanctioned republics, but we, the humans who comprise these states of mind, the squirming grubs, the microbic slime of this planet. We are bent on destruction, on self-destruction!” The round man in the tilted hat held a finger up in testament. “And why? Because of time! We have too much of it. Like misers we want to acquire it all, all the time. And what do we do with all this time? We claim that it is necessary for our own self-improvement and satisfaction! Yet look at us, do we look satisfied? If this is improvement, it is only preparation for the grave! The entire mammal world, with one exception, has never once given time to consider how to improve themselves. What can we say about their lack of discontent?”

“Get out with you words,” another man spoke up, “they’re spoiling the taste of my food.”

A few of the men at another table pushed back their bench and stood. The mouse haired man advanced toward the tilted hat who stood defiant in his righteousness. “I’ll teach you to curdle the cream!” he said threateningly.

“Stop!” It was Serpina. She had stepped out of the shadows. She was still smiling, and the men were diverted. “This man has freedom to speak his discontent. It is the winter of his days, one that we will all face, yet you want to deny him this fundamental right to speak the fruits of his experience. Why reject what he is saying when you could engage and glean the substance of his meaning?”

Mira had come to stand by Serpina, Lydia and Pyare cautiously following. “Yes, leave the old man alone, he has a right to his demons.”

The tilted hat bowed to the hostess. “I am only old because I have run out of time, but in my heart burns the eternal flame of love.”

Mouse hair glared at them and then glanced at the standing men around him. “Who are these intruders? Spies, refugees? I’ll want to see you papers!”

“Conan, you haven’t the authority. These are guests under my roof.”

“We’ll see about that.” He approached Serpina, his hand out demanding. “Your papers.”

Lydia stepped between them. “Let me show you mine.” She proffered the identification card with one hand and with the other placed the twin tips of the viper blade under his chin.

“Odette Oday?” Conan gulped and swallowed his insistence. He blinked at the passport. “Third Class Worker?” Stepping back, he shook his head. “Maybe those two.” He pointed with his chin at Serpina and Pyare. “But you, you’re too shiny. Except for the mud on your face, you could be a Victorian, an IOTA spy, for all I know.”

Serpina laughed. “What could IOTA possibly want with a congregation of unwashed farmers and trappers smelling of the field and the wood? Are you plotting a revolution, listening to Commodore Jack and his ICER propaganda over unsanctioned broadcast frequencies on illegally modified boxes? Here in your sylvan redout, you are the powerless of the powerless. The only thing that protects you is your ignorance. Perhaps that is the stench of ruin to which this fellow is referring. Furthermore, we are travelers, not displaced persons. Our path was not chosen for us thus we must follow the one we can find. What is our goal I cannot say only that it is not found here.” With that she bowed to Mira and clasped the woman’s hands in hers. “Thank you for your hospitality, sister.”

Once outside, Lydia caught up with Serpina who seemed propelled by a determination to get away as quickly as possible. “What was all that in there?” What were you doing?”

Serpina shook her head. “Not now. We are still in danger. We have to get out of sight.”

A shout was raised from the house. Pyare on Lydia’s heels, they turned as one expecting the worst. It was the man in the tilted hat hurrying toward them.

Slightly out of breath, he wagged a finger at Serpina. “A foolish thing to do. Stir up a hornet’s nest. They are used to my disputations. They insult me and then forget that I am about. Or should I say they think they can forget what I’ve said, yet I’ve lodged a bug in their berets. Over time their objections are less vociferous although they enjoy the wit of their insults too much to ever stop.” He smiled under the wide brush of his moustache. “Thank you for coming to my defense.” His brow creased, “But your unfortunate disclosure of their anti-government activities has put you in grave danger.”

Pyare confronted the tilted hat. “Who are you?”

Bushy eyebrows raised in surprise, “Of course, how rude of me. Allow me to introduce myself,” hat doffed, “Abraham Etugouda, poet, world traveler, originally from Iberia, citizen in the Republic of Letters.”

Serpina spoke up. “Mr. Etugouda, perhaps you can help us. We are trying to reach. . . .”

“Wait,” Pyare stepped in, “How do we know we can trust him with where we’re going?”

Etugouda gave a body shaking laugh. “I’m an old man everyone thinks is crazy. And who would believe me? And why would I betray you? I’m a stranger here myself. Let me repay your kindness. Tell me your destination, perhaps I can offer some assistance.”

“Autre Lyons,” Lydia replied, “It is imperative that we reach it within the next twenty four hours. Unfortunately following the regular route through the Massif will not allow that.”

Tilted hat nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, yes, I think it can be done. But we must move quickly.” He herded them across the stone bridge and up the hillside to a copse of oaks. “The men at the Bear & Lion have a transmitter in the storeroom. They will have alerted the militia by now. The roads will be watched.”

“What can we do? If you know the path, tell us!” Lydia insisted.

“I will recite a poem.”

“How will a poem ever get us to Autre Lyons?”

“It is an epic poem of local provenance called La Reccourci. It tells the story of a brave young woman who follows an ancient hunter’s path over the Massif to the valley beyond in order to save her father’s life.”

“I don’t see how that is helpful? ”

“As I said, I am a world traveler and a poet. I travel the world collecting the epic poems of various regions, especially epics that describe the topography of the locale. This particular epic contains a map, you might say, landmarks, and directions. It is of the genre known as GPS, Grandes Poemes Secour.”

“Your reciting the poem will require you to accompany us,” Pyare stated suspiciously, “Don’t you have it written down?”

The poet’s moustache raised in a grin and he pointed above his ear. “It’s all up here! I’ve memorized hundreds of epics.” He gazed at their incredulous expressions. “Now if I can just remember how it begins.”

Next Time: The Tides Of History

Contents Vol. 3 No. 8

December 29, 2023Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionA Detective Story, A Don Coyote & Saundra Pansy Mystery, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Better Than Dead, Carriers, Cheese Stands Alone, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Crimefighter, Dime Pulp, Gothic, Hard Boiled Fiction, Just Coincidence, Mark DuCharme, Mike Servente, Phyllis Huldarsdottir, Pierre Anton Taylor, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk, The Man From La Mirada PerdidaNuallain House, Publishers

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Eight of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Carriers by Mark DuCharme returns with it’s gothic air of shadowy creatures who might just be the living dead. Carriers is a vampire novella with touches of black comedy and satirical bite, and is told from the perspective of its unreliable narrator and protagonist, Johnny. It takes place during a “plague” that has been going on for two years in an unnamed city. Dead bodies litter the streets, hallways, and homes. A corpse disposal company hires people like Johnny to transport them to a facility at the edge of town with the very important stipulation that the bodies be delivered there before sundown. No one ever says why. Read more in the latest installment of Carriers, Episodes V-VII .

Issue 8 brings to a close Colin Deerwood’s long running serial, Better Than Dead, A Detective Story, featuring the unpredictable peregrinations of private investigator Lackland Ask, aka Stan Gardner, aka Sam Carter, and now Dr. Jerome Paulsen, O.D. leaving on a freighter for Cuba one step ahead of the law, the mob, and the draft board. All the loose ends (and there were many) are tied up or disposed of (are they?), and now the fugitive confidential agent can exit stage left. Find out how the story ends in Better Than Dead, Episode 30. (A note from the author reminds us that the cover of this issue is from an original Black Mask magazine, c. 1940, and as such was the catalyst and inspiration for the more than 150 pages of serial crime fiction that followed. )

This issue also introduces a new private eye, Don Coyote, brain child of Mike Servante, a newbie to the musty (and labyrinthine) halls of serial crime fiction although an aficionado of the genre, in a metatextual story that promises to be a lot of fun, titled The Man From La Mirada Perdida, A Don Coyote & Saundra Pansy Adventure. Read inaugural episodes i & ii in this latest offering of imaginative crime fiction from Dime Pulp.

Dime Pulp regular authors Pierre Anton Taylor and Phyllis Huldarsdottir were unfortunately caught up in the seasonal vortices that often cause time displacement, especially as the days get shorter, and the imprudent certainty that there is still plenty of time to get everything done. Phyllis’s steampunk adventure, Cheése Stands Alone, will return in Vol. 4, Number 1 in early 2024, as will Pierre’s crimefighter fiction, Just Coincidence.

FYI: Available for readers of Dime Pulp who may have missed a few issues or lost the thread of a serial, Dime Pulp Yearbook 21, featuring the novels (The Last Resort and Better Than Dead) and the short fiction (Hard Boiled Myth and Gone Missing) of Volume One’s 12 issues, is joined by Dime Pulp Yearbook 22, featuring the complete pulp Western, On The Road To Las Cruces, continuing episodes of a detective story, Better Than Dead, the opening chapters of new serial novels, Just Coincidence and Cheése Stands Alone, the short fiction of Hard Boiled Myth and Polka Dot Dress, as well as Dropping A Dime’s pithy pulp observations. Volume Two’s 10 issues are available for perusal in their entirety by simply clicking on the links in this paragraph or on the menu bar above. Dime Pulp Yearbook 23 will be available in late January ’24 as part of the annual archival review.

If you’ve made it this far, click on the links above to read the entertaining serial contents of Volume Three, Number 8

Special Note: Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine has changed its posting schedule from monthly issues to once every forty-five days (more or less—mostly more). Thus Volume Three will (hopefully) consist of eight issues (much to the relief of the overworked writers and production staff). Thank you for your understanding.

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

The Man From La Mirada Perdida—i & ii

December 29, 2023Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk FictionA Don Coyote & Saundra Pansy Mystery, books, crime, Crime Fiction, Hard Boiled Fiction, horror, Metatextual, Mike Servente, Pulp Fiction, The Man From La Mirada Perdida, writingNuallain House, Publishers

A Don Coyote & Saundra Pansy Mystery

by Mike Servante

i

—Ever work for a private investigator before?

—I can’t honestly say that I have.

—But you’ve had experience working in an office, answering phones, typing?

—It’s all there in the resume.

—Yes, of course. So why don’t you tell me in your own words.

—I was a receptionist for a law firm, Stag, Stagger,& Staggered. I answered phones, took messages, routed calls, sorted mail and put it in the appropriate mailboxes. And did some light typing. The legal secs did the important stuff.

—Just a minute, did you just say legal sex?

—No, no, legal secretaries, that’s what they were called, legal secs, legal secretaries.

—Alright, go on.

—The firm had an investigator on retainer, but I never saw him. Only his mail.

—Only his mail what?

“His mail, envelopes, packages, legal briefs, that sort of thing.”

—I see, mail, briefs, packages.

—But that was a while back. I haven’t been in an office environment since I got married.

—You’re married?

—Was. Widow.

—Oh, I’m sorry. My condol. . . .

—It was several years ago.

—Yes.

—And I’ve had to rejoin the workforce.

—Your husband, uh, Mr. Pansy?

—Corrigan, Jake Corrigan. Pansy is my maiden name.

—Ok. Mind if I call you Saundra? Or Sandy?

—If it comes with a pay check, I’m ok with that, though I’m not particularly fond of Sandy.

—Pay check, right, good you brought that up. If you were to accept this assignment I can only use you parttime, three days a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, eight till noon, I will pay you for your time each week on Friday. I hope those are enough hours for you. Maybe once business picks up we can add more time.

—That’s fine. Like I said I’m rejoining the workforce after years of being a housewife. I’d like to take it slow. Plus I get Jake’s pension.

—Oh, yes, pension, that’s good. What did your husband do?

—He was a cop.

—Really? That’s very interesting, a cop?

—He never talked to me about the job. Said he didn’t want to depress me.

—I see. That was thoughtful.

—I have a question. Do I call you Don or Mr. Coyote?

—Boss is fine.

I’m a good judge of character. She was in her late forties, going gray pixie cut that went with the pixie face, dangling silver earrings, intense blue eyes, mascara thick eyelashes, not so subtle green shadowed and precisely drawn eyebrows. Her lipstick was a synthetic shade of orange and probably applied with a palette knife.

What choice did I have? The only other applicant was a high school girl who had arrived with her mother who wisely stayed in the car. She’d snapped her gum while looking around the small office, bewildered, pointed to the typewriter, and asked, “What’s that?”

This woman in the colorful summer dress and gold brocade shrug appeared evasive and reluctant when I asked about her experience. Anyone can write a resume, I wanted to get the depth of her understanding by how she used her words and if she was familiar with the nomenclature.

She brought up sex almost immediately. I don’t want to say that I have that effect on women, but I am not uninitiated in the ways of the world. When I questioned her bringing it up, she covered skillfully and made it out to be a misunderstanding on my part. I don’t make those kinds of mistakes. And as if to further tease, she brought up male briefs and packages. I wasn’t born yesterday. Packages, that was just blatant.

Next she tried the pity angle. Widow. What was I supposed to say? How did he die? And she coldly brushed off my expression of sympathy. I could tell she was desperate to get the job, her repeated emphasis on the need to return to the workforce, but maybe at her age it’s a challenge, and she’s desperate.

I guess that’s something I’ve never known, I come from money. My grandfather was a jeweler, from the Ukraine, one of three Koyoskozko brothers who were headed to Alaska during the gold rush to claim their fortune. Grandpa jumped ship in San Francisco, tired of puking his guts at every swell of a wave. He apprenticed to a jeweler, a fellow countryman, and learned the business. With the ’06 quake, the business was destroyed. Like many made homeless by the catastrophe, he headed north, following the circumference of San Pablo Bay until he reached the wet lands on the northwest side of the bay once owned by General Vallejo. There on a river that drained into the bay sat a relatively untouched settlement known as Petaluma. He took it to be an Indian name. He was successful, changed his own name to something easier to pronounce, Coyote, though at the time he didn’t realize its import as a mythical figure in the lore of his adopted country. Eventually he had jewelry outlets in every major burg in the valley. My father inherited the business and became even more prosperous by investing in real estate. When he died I inherited millions. He’d eased out of the jewelry business a while ago although I had worked for him as a courier when I was going to the University in San Francisco. I often carried satchels of very valuable jewels in the trunk of my Impala as if they were nothing more than a bag full of old tennis togs. I had a permit to carry, then, and still do.

That woman is wily, I’ll give her that. When I politely asked if I could address her by her first name she immediately turned it into an offer of a job.

I don’t know who he thought he was, thinning red hair, tall and gangly with quite a beak, too. He dressed conservatively for this neck of the woods, slacks, open collar shirt. I’ll admit I was desperate. After Jake’s passing, I had to keep up the house payments and that meant cutting corners on other necessities. Besides, being housebound as a homemaker for a couple dozen years, I was ready to re-experience life as a single woman.

My husband used to say I was a ditz, but what did he know, he was a lummox. Jake worked as a Napa PD patrol officer till he dropped dead at Swank’s Steakhouse in Santa Rosa. The red meat in his gut didn’t agree with the red meat of his heart. As someone from his family said at the wake, “He larded up.” Certainly no one on my side of the family would have said it, out loud, at any rate. And it was true that the slim handsome police cadet I married turned into a wide load, pot-bellied, booze swilling porker right before my eyes. The sorrier he felt for himself, the more pounds he put on, and the meaner he got. He was an accident that didn’t wait long to happen.

I’m from around here, born, bred, and schooled. My folks and their folks and their folks before them were pioneers in these parts, chicken ranching, sheep and cattle, apples and prunes, they did just about anything that had to do with growing or grazing. Of course Coyote Jewelers was known far and wide. My wedding ring came from their showroom in Sonoma, or as my dad used to call it, Sonombula because it was a sleepy little town back then, before it got overrun by grapevines and all the snobby money, snooty attitude, and high prices that followed. Growing grapes was suddenly an art when all it was really was just good farming. That’s my stock. I’m not afraid of honest work and I expect to be respected for doing it.

I knew enough to be on my guard, having worked as a waitress while I was taking secretarial courses at the local business school. Guys always bring sex up and then when you call them on it, they act all offended like and pretend that’s not what they meant. Happened at the office, too. And though I hadn’t expected it to come up in the job interview, there it was. Everyone knows a legal sec is short for legal secretary just as a para is short for paralegal. If I hadn’t got married I think I would have tried for paralegal, get the training and all.

In the meantime, I needed to get work and his acting like a jerk wasn’t making it easy. I wasn’t going to catch the drift? Mail, package, briefs. I come from a big family, brothers, cousins, uncles, all of them brain in the gutter. I’ve heard it all. And I wasn’t going to fall for it. If that’s what he thought, he had another think coming. Saundra Pansy was never a pushover whatever you thought of the name.

Guess he got the drift. Boss said I was to start Monday, eight sharp.

ii

—It’s not electric?

—Um no, but it’s authentic.

—It looks like it weighs a ton.

—It’s a 1939 Royal KMM with the patented Magic Margin system. See, if you hold down the right or left margin lever and slide the carriage to the desired location you ‘magically’ set the margin. It still has the original round glass-topped keys. I paid $5 for it at a flea market, and it still works as well as when it was new. I even ordered extra ribbons.

—Right. . . ribbons. That’s quite a museum piece.

—Oh, it is perfectly functional.

—And this lever?

—That’s the carriage return.”

—Ok, now I remember seeing a video of one being used when I was in business school. We practiced typing on electric typewriters.

—But you assured me you could type!

—Oh yeah, no problem, if it’s qwerty, I let my fingers do the walking, and I can do it blindfolded. I can also do Gregg but it’s been a while so I might be a little rusty.

—Greg?

—Yeah, you know, the shorthand guy.

—Shorthand?

—Transcription. Like I said, it’s been a while.

—Good, good, for now typing will be enough. And this is an elegant machine. You shouldn’t have any problem with it, freshly oiled and cleaned.

—You don’t have a computer?

—No I don’t believe in computers. But look, I even had some stationary printed.

—Stationary?

—I hired a graphics firm to design the letterhead and the logo. Don Coyote & Associates, Private Investigations. I think the howling coyote in the oval frame like that is quite well done.

—That looks like a wolf.

—No, no. I’ve been assured that it is, in fact, a coyote.

—Have you ever seen a coyote in the fur?

—I’ve seen pictures. Many pictures.

—Well, alrighty then, if that’s the case.

—Oh, no, no case yet, but I’m hoping in the near future to develop some leads, lure clients in need of investigative services.

—And in the meantime is there any correspondence you’d like me to write, calls you’d like me to make, appointments you want me to schedule, dictation? I’m ready to get down to business.

—Good, and I don’t know if I have to point this out, but that is what is called a rotary dial on the telephone. It’s a 1937 Stromberg Carlson, very rare.

—It works? I thought it was just part of the décor. Like the typewriter.

—It is in perfect working order, as functional as the day it rolled off the assembly line. It has the original bell. Wait till you hear it!

—I’ll assume it doesn’t take pictures.

—Of course not. The telephone is for the ear, not the eyes. This is not some Dick Tracy outfit with wrist radios and video phones. Don Coyote, Private Eye, is nothing if not authentic!

—Ok, you’re the boss. I’m ready to get to work. I just don’t want to waste your time and money sitting around not doing anything.

—Well, first of all you need to get familiar with the type of job you’ll be doing and probably the best way to do that is to begin by creating a catalog of the files and reference books in my office.

—Like a librarian?

—I have a collection of rare pulp fiction magazines and obscure post war crime fiction paperbacks. Oh, and my film noir library, private eye memorabilia, crime scene photos. I would recommend that you read a few of those novels to get a feel for the business. I’m thinking along the lines of Mike Hamm. . . .

—You’re going to pay me to read?

—Well, no, I see it as something you could take home and do. To bring you up to speed. A private eye’s secretary requires specialized knowledge.

—So I would be doing more than just typing and filing? That sound like I’d need specialized training. On company time.

—Are you going to answer that?

—Don Coyote & Associates, Private Investigations, how can I direct your call? One moment please. It’s for you.

I don’t know how to say this. My expectations might have been too unrealistic. She chews gum. Maybe she was nervous. I suspect that she is rather unqualified and I will eventually have to let her go. As my father used to quote my grandfather as saying, “The biggest problem in running a business is employees.” She is rather plain in a well-scrubbed sort of way. And maybe someone should have told her that colorful plastic jewelry was no longer as popular as it might have been, if ever, in the fifties, say. And even though she was made up to match the bangles and bracelets, she couldn’t hide her lack of refinement when I showed her to her desk.

That typewriter is a classic machine, indestructible, a workhorse. I couldn’t believe my luck. It was from an estate sale, everything had pretty much sold at auction except for a few odd items, like gooseneck lamps, and the old typewriter. One of the heirs was selling them at a flea market where, on occasion, I browse, looking for old magazines and paperbacks. A hand printed sign propped on the machine read BOAT ANCHOR? $5 or B/O. Finding a typewriter repair shop and restoring it was probably the hardest and most expensive part. Even the repairman had never encountered this old of a model, a 1939 Royal. His experience had been mainly on lightweight plastic chassis portables and dreadnaught electric office machines. He also repaired watches, something else experiencing technological displacement.

As soon as I questioned her competence she immediately brought the conversation around to sex. She said she was alright with quirky, and then something that she had done blindfolded with someone named Greg involving shorthand, whatever kinky fetish that was, but I could just imagine. I can only assume she was desperate. She kept saying that it had been a while. Then she brought up computers. And that’s a sore spot with me. I find them dehumanizing. Unfortunately I can become quite irrational when confronted with the issue. I deflected by showing the stationary I had printed but she wanted to make an argument about whether it was a wolf or a coyote depicted in the oval of the logo. I can see that she has a petty side.

I definitely got the feeling that she was in over her head. She was undoubtedly confused by the rotary dial on the telephone. She tried to laugh it off by making a joke. I have very little patience with mockery especially when it pertains to the degradation of values under assault from the techno sphere. I’ll admit it, I’m a technophobe.

And when I suggested that she educate herself for the role she would play as a secretary to a private investigation firm, she turned it into a labor negotiation. I was about to assert my prerogative as the employer when the phone rang. I’ll admit, she did answer the call quite professionally.

Hoo boy! I didn’t think I realized what I was getting into. That machine, a manual typewriter, was carpel tunnel syndrome waiting to happen. I thought he was kidding. Maybe a monitor would cleverly pop up from a hidden compartment on the mahogany desk. No such luck.

I had to remind him again that I was qualified as a secretary, I’d even included a copy of my diploma from Empire Business College with my resume. I found a clean copy that my crazy friend Lola Lamont hadn’t altered the heading of the certificate to Vampire Business College though in truth that’s what we all called it—they didn’t suck you blood, just your money. But from the look on his face, it might have been TMI, too much information.

Then he trots out this stationary with a heading like it was from a comic book. A picture of a coyote, he says, in a clunky oval frame. It was a wolf. I’ve seen coyotes numerous times. Even shot one on my uncle Brad’s sheep ranch over by Two Rock. I know what a coyote looks like. They’re vermin. But he’d seen pictures.

And speaking of pictures, he had to point out the antique telephone like I haven’t ever seen pictures on ones almost exactly like this one. My gran even had one on her bookshelf, used it as a bookend to hold up her collection of picture albums. He got a little touchy at my joke about taking pictures so I’m going to guess he had his funny bone surgically removed.

But I gotta hand it to the guy, his setup is right out of an old black and white movie which I can’t watch because without the color, there’s no meaning, and I lose interest real fast. The place is on Western just off the main drag in what used to be the original family jewelry store, a three story brick walk-up. The downstairs showroom is now an antique store so he doesn’t have to go far for his décor. His office is on the second floor, the door at the end of the hallway at the top of the stairs. It’s one of those old wooden doors with a frosted glass panel on the upper half and in gold lettering it says Don Coyote & Associates. I haven’t a clue who the associates are but I figure I’ll find out soon enough. Inside is a small reception area with a couple of old chairs up against the wall and across from the big mahogany desk where I’m supposed to work. There’s another door on which is written in the same gold lettering, Don Coyote, Private Investigator, and call me crazy, but I’m guessing that’s where the files and reference books are that he wants me to catalog. And read.

He has another think coming if he thought I was going to take work home. If I learned one thing from Jake Corrigan, it’s don’t take the job home. And the only thing I’m going to flip when I get there is the channels. Even McDonald’s pays you when they train you to flip burgers. I could see that that was going to be a bone of contention. If you want me to do a special job, train me. I’m a fast learner. I was about to let him know where I was coming from when the phone rang. It startled me at first. It was loud. And it was a real bell, not an electronic facsimile. I picked up the handset and immediately went into receptionist mode. It was a woman’s voice. She was sobbing, “Help me, oh please, Don Coyote.”

Next time: la bola desnuda or don’t go bowling naked

Better Than Dead—30

December 29, 2023Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction"Brother can you spare a dime?", 1940, A Detective Story, Better Than Dead, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Fedoras and Flatfoots, Pulp Fiction, weird-fictionNuallain House, Publishers

by Colin Deerwood

The cops finally caught up with me. Hogan, specifically. I had stopped at the newsstand around the corner from Hopper’s Diner, the daily blat’s headline blaring Bombers Blast Britain. It was another headline below the fold that caught my eye, Missing Ridley Constable Sought For Questioning. I was curious. Maybe Marie had stirred up a ruckus. I was on my way back to Alice’s old basement studio from the passport bureau with my new identity tucked in the breast pocket of my darker than tan suit coat. Almost two weeks had passed since I’d snuck back into the bad Apple. A lot had changed, and for me, for the better.

The five grand from the sale of the art piece had done wonders for my spirits, only the best mash, and my wardrobe, only the best haberdasher. It had also gone to the Uptown Downtown barber shop over on Seventh where I had had my mug given a going over. When I stepped out of the chair I was sporting a precise VanDyke. It went well with my sporty beige fedora with the fly fish feathers in the band and my new identity as Dr. Jerome Paulsen, O.D. Maybe the freedom of having a pile made me reckless. People were still looking for me. I’d let my guard down. But in my dark glasses and new duds, even the newsboy didn’t recognize me at first, and I’d been buying newspapers, girlies, pulps, and my Lucky Strikes from him for years.

I considered buying the latest issue of the crime fiction magazine, Black Mask. I’m not a big reader, especially of imaginary crime, but my old mug was on the cover of this one. I could see where Larry Jakes had got the color of the bruise under one eye just right.

I was about to take a closer look when I heard a familiar voice behind me. “You think you can fool me, wisenheimer? I’d know you anywhere, even in your dark glasses. You’re what every parent’s bad dreams are made of.”

I couldn’t help but grin. Jake Hogan and I went way back to the old neighborhood where I’d grown up, mostly on the street. He’d been the rookie beat cop back then. We were all wisenheimers to him, Ralphie Silver, Stevie Silverman, and me as well as a handful of other faces on the block. We thought we were the toughest guys on the East Side. He threatened to haul us down to the station just to get our attention, and when that didn’t work, and we got older, he did haul us in, and that meant that our parents had to come and get us, and sometimes that was worse than being taken in. “I guess I should say thanks for keeping an eye of me all these years.”

“Where’d you get the money to suit up like that? Last time I saw you, you looked like you were sharing a wardrobe with a moth.”

“Inheritance?” I coughed.

“Oh yeah, who from? I know it ain’t from your old man. And I don’t think it’s from your mother, either.”

“A rich uncle.”

“He got a name?”

“Ned. Ned Ask.”

“Ned? That the best you can come up with?”

“Honest. His full name is Nedan T. Ask.”

“What’s the T stand for?”

“I dunno, Ted, Tom?” All of a sudden I felt like I was ten years old again, caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to do.

“That’s a nice story, wisenheimer, but I still got to take you downtown.”

“Come on, Hogan, you don’t think I had anything to do with Ralphie’s murder, do ya?”

He shook his head slowly, giving me the patented intense cop stare. “No, I don’t think you did Ralphie, wisenheimer. You ain’t got the guts or the brains.”

“Then whadya want with me?”

“Oh, I got questions about that crew that ended up full of holes at Kovic’s warehouse. But it ain’t only me, the government boys wanna have a word.”

“Listen, Hogan, this is all Ralphie’s fault.”

“There you go, blaming a dead man. I can’t say I’m surprised.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“Wait, wait. Let’s talk about this. There’s something you should know.” My chances at a clean getaway were fading fast. If Hogan took me in, I’d be a sitting duck for Kovic’s stoolies and anyone else who would want to get their hands on me. And I wanted to avoid the feds at all costs. “How about I buy you a cup of coffee over at Hopper’s diner?” I was gonna throw in the offer of a donut but I know how sensitive cops can be about that. “You know Ralphie,” I pleaded, “it was always his schemes that got the rest of us in trouble. And this whole chain of events started because Ralphie said he had a job for me. Hear me out. Ok?”

Hogan cocked his head to one side, surprised. He’d never heard any of us beg, no matter how deep a mess we were in.

“It all started with Kovic’s daughter.”

“Don’t tell me.” Hogan smirked over his cup of steaming java.

“Naw, nothing like that.” And I went on to tell him about how Ralphie Silver had set it up. I was going to be paid to find the mob boss’s daughter. Ralphie thought he could maybe get some of his gambling debt forgotten if I could bring her back to daddy. She had a history of running away and the old man usually sent one of his goons to retrieve her. But this time, it was way out of State, and South. His dapper boys would have been made out to be city slickers and the local law would be onto them like white on rice. As I could pose as a traveling salesman on my way through town without any problem.

Hogan grunted and shook his head when I told him how Kovic had stiffed me and left me for dead in a ditch on the island. And how I was determined to get what was owed me, with interest. But in the meantime, my pal, Al, the pearl diver at Madame Cho’s chop-suey joint, hooked me up with his sister, Della, who wanted me to find her boyfriend who had stolen something from her. “That’s how I got pulled in on suspicion of murdering him.”

“Yeah, I remember that. I knew that wasn’t you. It was a professional hit. I can’t figure why. He was a no account pimp. And his girlfriend wanted something he stole from her? I wonder what that was.”

I shrugged. “I never got the chance to find out.” I left out the fact that I had filched the postal slip from Della’s mailbox. “Of course that was before I knew that she and her brother were part of a robbery gang who called themselves the Thieves of Bombay.” And before I knew that waiting to be picked up at the post office was the exotic erotic jade, the Empress’s Cucumber.

I thought about the empty bank deposit envelope in the cigar box back at the basement studio where I was lying low, and the postal package notice it had once held. Della with her dying breath had told me she had mailed the jewelry box containing the rare jade to herself. Why was the postal slip missing? I was certain Rebecca had it on her that day. But she was dead. No one survives a fall four stories up.

“So not long after that, I’m in a phone booth where I find an address book somebody forgot. I woulda returned it but I couldn’t read it.” I didn’t want to say I lifted the wallet from a man drowning in the East River.

“I told ya, you shoulda stayed in school.”

“Naw, nothing like that. I can read alright. This wasn’t in regular writing. Something called Serial writing.”

“Serial writing? You mean like in the pulps?”

“I don’t think so. Whatever it was, it was Greek to me.”

“Waitaminute. Do you mean Cyrilic?”

“Yeah, probably. That sounds right. No way I can return it if I can’t read it so I stick it in my pocket. I go to buy a cheap suit from a tailor, see, and as he is taking my measurements, I’m trying on the suit coat, the address book drops out of my old one. He picks it up and gives it back to me and when he does, he sees the writing. He’s kinda shocked, probably because I don’t look the type to be reading that cockamamie scrawl. And he’s right. I do ok with the ABC’s and I don’t see why I gotta know anything else. Anyway, he says he can’t read it well but he knows someone who might, a rabbi, at some uptown address, and that I should see if he can’t help me.”

“Are you going somewhere with this, wisenheimer? If you keep droning on, I’m gonna need another cup of coffee.”

“Well, as it turns out the tailor has a daughter. . . .”

“Ok, I shoulda seen that coming.”

I had to watch my step with the story. Hogan didn’t need to know about the diamonds. It was best that I stuck with the beef I had with Kovic. I had tipped him to the crates of machine guns at the Serbian Social Club where I had gone, foolishly, to enact some kind of revenge because my old man taught me, somebody hits you, hit them back twice as hard. He didn’t say anything about a brick wall and hitting it twice as hard hurts twice as much. And I’d told Hogan about the heist at the Customs Warehouse and the threat to the grand jury investigating Kovic’s control of the waterfront. But how to explain Rebecca.

“Is she the one that jumped off the roof of that social club?”

“She didn’t jump. There was an explosion, remember? She was knocked off the terrace.” I didn’t have to tell him that it was Rebecca’s father who had built the bomb and planted it there on orders from Herr Doktor Soloman and his clandestine diamond syndicate.

“We never found a body so unless she walked, you’re imagining things.”

I had to think on that for a bit. “So Kovic grabs me, he thinks I set the bomb. They scram before the keystones can get there, and take me with them to the warehouse. Which is where you found me in the aftermath of the shootout.”

Hogan shook his head. “I can’t figure that one out. Once we started making identification of the bodies at Kovic’s warehouse, we realized we were on to an international gang that target the wealthy for their jewelry and their art. We’d been after them for a while as the ones who had been taking down high society penthouses and their art collections. I don’t see how Kovic fits in there. And the feds are still looking for him.”

“I don’t either but I heard he wanted me dead. And which is why I took it on the lam and laid low up in the Lakes country waiting for it to blow over. That’s where I learned my uncle had died and he had left me a little something in his will. I’m just in town wrapping up some business. I like it up in the country and I’m thinking of going back there to live. Start a new life, stay out of trouble.”

Hogan snorted. “Not a chance. Besides there’s the little matter of the victim’s statement.”

“Victim?”

“Yeah, a certain Alice Neal. About a month ago she was attacked in her studio by two men who were looking for you and the dame. Only thing that stopped them from murdering her was a crazy Czarist and his rapier. You’re an acquaintance of Miss Neal? You were seen leaving her dwelling recently. ”

“I’ll bet Kovic was behind it.”

Hogan shook his head. “Kovic’s goons don’t wear goggles. That one’s still a mystery. The same crew shot up a diamond dealer a while back. So far all the leads point to Chinatown.”

“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”

He laughed and it was a rare occasion when he did that. “I’m gonna thank you for the cup and I’m still gonna extend my hospitality and invite you downtown to sample some of the swill they call java.”

“Wait, what if I told you something that would get you in good with the G-men and get you a load of commendations and maybe even a handshake with the mayor.”

Hogan didn’t get where he was by ignoring situations that would put him in a good light. “I’m listening.”

“I know where Kovic is hiding out. You think that information could buy me a pass?”

“I could take you down to the precinct and beat it out of you.”

“Listen, Hogan, I just want to move to the country and get out of this rat race, make an honest living.”

“You should have quit while you were ahead, wisenheimer. Honest ain’t in your blood, and why would a rat leave the race when that’s the only thing he knows.” He sat back in the booth, a spiteful grin creasing his mug. “But ok, spill.”

“Chinatown.” That’s when it all fell into place. Hogan saying that all the leads pointed to Chinatown was the piece I was missing. The goggle bandits, of course. They resembled owls. And that’s what Max Feathers was called by the Chinese denizens in the neighborhood of his pawn shop, māo tóu yīng, the cat headed eagle. The Owl.

I stood in a doorway across the street from the pawn shop. I’d left Hogan holding up his end of the bargain. “For once you done something right, wisenheimer,” he’d said, “Just don’t leave town.” I had every intention of leaving town. My bags were packed and I’d made arrangements with Annie Bassinger, the tugboat captain. There was a freighter due to sail in the wee hours of the next morning and I was going to be on it. But first I had to take care of some unfinished business.

The front of the shop was dark, but a light shone against the ceiling at the far back where Max sat in his cage. I’d gone back to the basement studio and looked in the cigar box again. The empty deposit envelope, the cloth sachet that had held the uncut rocks, and slipped Rebecca’s peashooter into my pocket. The street was the usual hustle and bustle for the time of day, wagons and trucks and a smattering of foot traffic but mostly further up the block where the street stalls were set up. I waited for an old woman, bent forward on a cane, a scarf close around her face, to wobble past the entrance to the shop before I made my move.

The bell over the door tinkled. I quickly made my way through the racks of clothing and stacks of boxes to the cage. Max, his back to me, seated in his chair didn’t turn around until I was right up to the counter. He blinked at first and then nodded in recognition. “Lackland Ask, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“I got a bone to pick with you, Max.”

An evil smile creased his unshaven cheeks and he rolled his chair up to the teller caged counter. “Should I put you on a waiting list?”

“I’m taking cuts, Max. I brought that diamond here for you to appraise. And I told you I was gonna cut you in on the deal when the rabbi’s people paid me off for the address book. But you had to get greedy, you wanted it all.”

This time he laughed, exposing the ruins in his mouth. “Is that not the purpose of this madness? To want it all, to get it all?”

“You offered Rebecca the red brocade dress as an engagement present delivered to the address she gave you. You figured that’s where the diamonds were and you sent your boys to get them.”

“Do nothing in half measures, I learned long ago. Not only were the diamonds an opportunity but you, yourself, as well. With Mr. K’s price on your head, it was one I could not pass up.”

“Keep your hands where I can see them, Max. I know you’ve got a gat squirreled away on the shelf below.” I pulled the pistol from my pocket and pointed it at him.

He grinned and shrugged. “If you must know, I would have the diamonds and the finder’s fee from Mister K. My owls swooped in on their prey only to meet with fierce resistance and find the diamonds gone and you missing. I assumed that you and the diamonds had left together. I had your so-called office watched. The super was very cooperative. The sister act failed to fool him. He alerted my man who followed them to the woman’s studio. My owls swooped in only to find you not there and themselves dead. Unfortunate, but often the fate of soldiers for the cause.”

The bell over the door tinkled as someone entered the pawn shop. “Closed!” Max called out not taking his eyes off me or the gun. And then “Guānbì” in case it was one of the locals. The bell above the door sounded again. “The diamonds have entered the market so I hear. Whomever had them has made a tidy profit, and judging by your accouterments, you have come into some money. Only one thing puzzles me. According to my sources, the person who sold the uncut gems was a woman. Do I have to ask? Someone you know?”

That confused me, someone, a woman, had sold the uncut diamonds, and it must have shown. I hesitated as he brought the automatic to bear on me. “But I have you, Ask, and Mr. K’s offer is still standing. His current troubles with the authorities will be short lived and has not slackened his thirst for revenge.”

I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. I pulled it again with the same results.

Max was enjoying my panic. “You will kill me with your comedy, Lackland Ask. You in your fancy clothes, ridiculous beard, dark glasses, and toy pistol. I will die laughing. But before that happens, you will suffer a horrible death at the hands of Yan Kovic.”

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a movement followed by the shadow of a shape. Max didn’t realize until too late that we were not alone. It was the old woman in the head scarf I’d seen creeping along the sidewalk before I entered the pawn shop. Only it wasn’t an old woman after all. It was Rebecca. And she had a gun in her hand, a big gun. “Try this on for laughs, Max.” Her revolver barked. Max held his chest with a look on his face like something he ate didn’t agree with him, a lead pill, as he slowly spilled out of his chair and onto the floor behind the counter.

“Becky! I thought. . .the explosion. . .you fell. . . .”

“I didn’t fall, Lack. I jumped.” She pointed the gun at me. “I jumped from the ledge to the fire escape just as the bomb went off. I was certain that you were dead. In the commotion I was able to get out of the building unseen.”

“You’re alive!” I wanted to hold her in my arms but the gun wouldn’t let me.

“I don’t want to see you again, Lack. Don’t come looking for me, otherwise I will be forced to kill you. Forget me, you don’t even know my real name.”

How could I have been so blind? I kicked myself with the thought of how I had been fooled all the way back to the studio where I grabbed my satchel and left without leaving a note. I needed to make my exit before more bodies started piling up, one of which, to believe Rebecca, could very well be mine. All the same my mind was feverishly trying to make sense of how Rebecca was alive when I’d been certain she was dead, shocked and relieved because I’d been blaming myself all this time. What didn’t square was how she had the diamonds all along and had no intention of giving me my cut. How could I have missed that? I’m nothing if not skeptical, I can spot a con a long way coming. But not this, dazzled by a pretty face and womanly wiles.

She brushed off the double cross, saying that she needed the money to finance her goal of fighting fascism and the oppression of the working class wherever it arose. And the way she saw it, there was a lot of that in the States.

This was not the naïve kid I thought I was protecting from the mean cruel world. The tables were turned and I was the dupe being led around by a sharp cookie.

She didn’t want to go into detail about what she’d been up to since the night of the explosion, the night we’d made love in the shabby hotel, but I assumed fencing the diamonds had been some of it. She had some unfinished business she said, and it had to do with the jade, the Empress’s Cucumber, which explained the empty bank deposit envelope. But why be so careless to leave those things behind in the cigar box?

With a shrug of cruel indifference, she explained that she had redeemed the package with the postal call slip, and it contained the Empress’s Cucumber that Della had mailed to herself. The only problem was that the jade was a fake, a soapstone replica. Someone had switched the authentic jade with an imitation jade cucumber.

I had to think about that for a bit. The only time that the swap could have been made was when it was in the possession of Della’s pimp boyfriend, the one who was murdered. The Thieves had got it in a heist of a collector’s penthouse. Then someone stole it from them and left the fake behind. It was a wily move and I knew exactly just who could have pulled it off. He was gargling blood and thrashing on the floor behind the counter, The Owl.

Rebecca had come to the same conclusion when she discovered that it was a replica. She had stumbled upon the authentic jade after Max had offered her an engagement present. It had been a ruse to get her address where he would have the red brocade dress delivered, assuming, correctly, that the diamonds would be found where she lived. Max was hiding the Empress’s Cucumber in plain sight. She’d never received the red dress either, it was still hanging on the rack, so she was taking it and the jade as well.

That’s the way I’ll always remember her, revolver pointed at me, dress over one arm, imperial green brocade box in the other, backing out the door to the hubbub of the street outside. Rebecca was not who I thought she was. That accent, the innocent act, had me fooled good. I figured I wasn’t the first and I wouldn’t be the last. She wanted the power to change the world because she was a formidable woman, the money from the sale of the rocks and the authority of the Empress’s Cucumber would make her what the Chinese call qing guo qing cheng, a terrifyingly powerful woman. A flash of red and she was gone. I had to wonder, is she working for Uncle Joe or just a rebel with a just cause, the Joan of Arc in all women? That’s why when I think of her I think of her as the Red Empress.

I stood atop the accommodation ladder looking out over the smear of lighted early morning skyline behind the scrim of a thick fog. In the churning waters below, the stern of the tug Narcissus was pulling away from the freighter’s towering hull. I’d said my goodbyes to Annie, telling her that she was one of the reasons I wished I could stay. “Then stay,” she pleaded, “Get your seaman papers. Ship out to the West Coast, Hawaii, I hear it’s pretty safe out there.” But, nah, my old man was one, and that wasn’t me. Robal, one of Annie’s crew, had given me the name of someone to look up when I got to Havana who would connect me with someone else to get me the rest of the way. Valparaiso, no one would ever think of looking for you there, an old mobster told me once. I was travelling light, a change of clothes and my new name as a visually impaired optometrist, like it said on my passport. Some people might appreciate the irony and refer to me as “the blind man”, a really private eye. Maybe I could get into the art collection con south of the Equator. Open an art gallery, call it The Blind Man.

The first mate interrupted my reverie and indicated the direction with an outstretched arm. “This way to your cabin, Dr. Paulsen. The Captain looks forward to meeting you at breakfast.” I stepped through the hatch and into the passageway where fastened to the bulkhead was a life ring displaying the ship’s name, the S.S. Van Dyne.

END

Is there a sequel in the making? Featuring The Red Empress, The Blindman, The Owl, and Mr. K? Stay tuned to Dime Pulp, The Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine!

Carriers V-VII

December 29, 2023Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fictionbooks, Carriers, Crime Fiction, fiction, horror, Mark DuCharme, Pandemic, poetry, Pulp Fiction, Vampires, writingNuallain House, Publishers

by Mark DuCharme

-v-

In truth it wasn’t the door I finally broke through, but the plastered drywall frame it had been latched to. When I managed to accomplish that feat— and not without some terrible cost to my bones— I remember her laughing. This struck me as odd, for the sight we found within those L-shaped quarters was hardly amusing. Her own father— for that is what she called him— Gruber, that crazy old goat— lay there with a great red stream trickling from his neck. He was obviously, incontestably dead— had died by most horrid means— yet it was quite unimaginable what beast, either human or animal, might have entered his chamber and delivered the wound. (Still more unimaginable, I had heard nothing of what must have been a terrible struggle, given the condition of the scene, with books and papers strewn about, though our adjoining apartments were only separated by a thin layer of drywall, through which I used to routinely hear even Gruber’s faintest mumblings.)

I remembered what Dr. Greenway had said. I looked closer at the departed— and yes, there were two wounds indeed, two small wounds, somewhat close, and exactly at the site of the jugular, just as the good doctor had described. In addition, I now noticed, from that closer vantage, the somewhat gray complexion of the skin and the increasingly jaundiced look in the eyes. No, this was no work of a beast as we know it, nor an intruder; Gruber, that strange, crazy old man, had clearly fallen victim to the plague. Well, that, at least, explained why I had heard no struggle: presumably, there had been none. And then it hit me: he had to be taken to the facility, and sooner than later! Gruber was now what my bosses would call a carrier. And even if I were off-duty, you see, I simply couldn’t let a carrier sleep— to go on sleeping. I had to get him to the facility as fast as I could.

His daughter— or the creature claiming to be such— seemed to feel less urgently or sadly about all of this than me. It’s not that she exulted; rather, a blankness overtook her affect, out of which she seemed lost to herself, benumbed. Perhaps the shock of loss had overwhelmed her; I suspected as much, but could not judge with certainty, having only just met her— yet she suddenly seemed not in this world at all, but in another.

“Can you help me get him down to my truck?” My question seemed to jar her. She stared into space a moment, then regained herself.

“Sure,” she nodded, half smiling. I had him by the armpits. She was about to grab his feet, but then blinked in awareness, veered, and made her way to the great, old, wooden desk where Gruber kept his ravings— the ones in written form, at least.

“Here, this is for you,” she said, handing me an envelope on which “Johnny” had been scrawled in idiotic hand. “He told me he wanted you to have it.”

I attempted to stuff it in my back pocket, but suddenly realized I was still attired in plaid, woolen pajamas. “Excuse me,” I said, looking down in embarrassment, then set the body back down and went straight back to my quarters. Once there, I hastily threw on yesterday’s pants, shirt and socks, in addition to my winter coat, a trench resembling military wear of several bygone eras ago. I tossed the envelope upon the small table that serves all my nutritional, social (when I have visitors) and business needs, but then thought better of it: this Mr. Thorne, or one of his agents, might well intrude again while I’m away, and though I doubted the envelope contained more than ravings, if only out of respect for the dead, I thought it best to keep it out of that Thorne’s reach. I stuffed it hastily into the inside pocket of my overcoat.

“What’s your name,” I inquired, on returning. I thought it best to have a way to contact her— just in case.

“Analeise. Analeise Gruber. You can call me Ana.” A smile broke upon her pallid face, and her brown eyes suddenly, briefly, regained their luster.

“That doesn’t matter now,” I retorted, striving to keep this all on strictly business terms. “Give me your card.”

I had no reason to expect that she would have one, but she produced a rectangular, off-white piece of stiff cardstock from her small, decorative, gold lamé handbag. It wasn’t until the next day that I noticed it was the same thick, off-white stock with the same dark, almost blood-red font as the card that Thorne, or someone in his employment, had deposited on my pillow.

We carried the body down the dilapidated, crooked flights of stairs. She was surprisingly much stronger than she looked.

-vi-

Although I did briefly consider taking Old Gruber straight to the arena, I judged that there would be enough time to take him directly to the facility before going to pick up my cargo. And besides, what else was there to do now? I wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep, and even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to sleep for long. Besides, it was still dark. Sunup wouldn’t happen for a good hour. I considered waiting till the sun’s first rays, but the problem with that idea was twofold: if I did that, I’d never be able to get to the arena in time, and I was afraid of what might happen if I left Gruber alone before dawn. Oh, I’ve heard stories! You see, it seems that carriers sometimes can wake up. I don’t know much about it (or I didn’t then), but I knew enough to know that I didn’t want him left unattended in the event that did happen. Uneasy as I felt about the idea of driving him in the dark to the facility, I was more afraid of the alternative. So I went back upstairs, grabbed some food to eat in my cab, and I was off, down crooked streets.

Yet all that time, I felt that strange old fool’s dead, yellow eyes staring at me, hauntingly, in the rearview, neither quite alive nor entirely dead. Must I tell you how I feared him?

His eyes were cold, dead, now fully yellow— most devoid of expression. That blank, almost idiotic twist of his mouth— one achieved only through his death throes— threatened to break suddenly into a smile, a most wicked and evil grin. I watched for it, almost as carefully as I watched the twisted roads ahead of my careening vehicle— but I swear it never occurred.

I was racing down Pico Avenue— I mean really racing! Dawn was fast approaching. I could see better now, in the new, bluish half-light. I put my boot to the pedal and zoomed past trouble— for what had I, exactly, to fear? Wasn’t I a Transporter, an official agent of the Company? Who was anyone to interrupt my racing? Even the police didn’t care!

I was delirious with excitement and relief. The slowly awakening sun seemed to mark the end of my fears about Old Gruber, at least for the time being. I was getting close to the facility, when suddenly I turned a corner and caught a flash of rosy, post-dawn light in the rearview as I passed the towering hulk of an abandoned, formerly auspicious office structure. For all I knew, carriers were having their way in there at that very moment.

I turned another corner and at last could see the facility looming ahead in the distance.

-vii-

When I arrived, there was no one there, no dockworkers, no flatbeds on which to dump the remains. Now that the sun was almost fully up, I felt a little safer— and that was good, for it suddenly occurred to me that I would have to carry the old man in— and I had no idea whether the building would be open or not! Suddenly, the colossal mistake of my hasty decision fully dawned on me. For all I knew, I wouldn’t be able to leave him there at all— would have to transport him, in fact, back to the arena, to pick up my other cargo, only to race back here again before the pink sun sank.

I looked back through the tiny window separating the driver’s cab from the carriage proper. I could see no change in Gruber: same yellow eyes, same gray complexion (perhaps just a shade grayer now), same twisted half-smile. Perhaps my fears had been unfounded after all, I exulted to myself, in the eerie, bright light of new-day.

I steeled myself and exited the cab, swerved round, and unlocked the rear door of the transport. He didn’t move at all. Whatever had I been thinking?

I entered, situated my arms about his (I could tell) stiffening corpse, and lifted him up, as one would lift a new bride, and carried him out of the carriage, making my way toward the narrow flight of stairs leading up to the platform. I reached the top and headed to the door next to the warehouse gates. If anyone was there— if I had any hope of dropping off Old Gruber at this hour— that was where I might find him. I set down the stiff assortment of limbs and knocked hard— knocked and knocked with all my might, upon the heavy, unrelenting steel door. I knocked for what felt like nearly a quarter hour, and I was just about ready to give up, when I heard faint, approaching footsteps, some rustling keys, and a sharp metallic click. The door swung slowly open, and I could see Carlos behind it. He looked like he was still half asleep. I had no idea he would be here this early.

“Sorry, Carlos, but I got one for ya. I’ll be back at the usual.” He nodded mutely, then I turned and scooped up the cadaver— for what else was he now?— and brought it through the doorframe. I had never been through that door, but there was a pallet on the other side, and I decided that would be as good a place to leave Old Gruber as any. I laid him there, and Carlos kind of nodded, while making vacant eye contact. I veered back and walked out without saying goodbye. He hadn’t said a word the whole time.

Contents Vol. 3 No. 7

November 8, 2023Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionA Detective Story, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Better Than Dead, Carriers, Cheese Stands Alone, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Crimefighter, Dime Pulp, Gothic, Hard Boiled Fiction, Just Coincidence, Mark DuCharme, Phyllis Huldarsdottir, Pierre Anton Taylor, Pulp Fiction, SteampunkNuallain House, Publishers

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Seven of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Phyllis Huldarsdottir returns with the continuing adventures of Airship Commander Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”) searching for her anti-Commonwealth renegade father, Commodore Jack, with the help Doctor Professor Jean-Pierre Serre-Pain, proprietor the Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium, a traveling snake show, and his associates, former circus strongman, Vlady, and Serpina, the snake girl. On the run from IOTA (the Investigative Office of The Admiralty), she has narrowly escapes capture by her nemesis, Chief Inspector Karla Kola, in Oldest Orleans, and now with the help of a young wannabe airship pilot, Pyare, must traverse the Central Massif to rendezvous with Serre-Pain and the dirigible that will take them on a mercy mission to HOAR (the Horn Of Africa Republics), base for the anti-Commonwealth ICERS. Read more in Episode XI of Cheése Stands Alone!

Pierre Anton Taylor’s dark crimefighting serial, Just Coincidence is about a privileged young man with the unremarkable name of Wayne Bruce who returns to the site where his father once had his business, a battery manufacturing plant, and where he often spent his childhood days hanging around the factory and the neighborhood. His return is haunted by the mysterious circumstances surrounding his father’s death and the vague feeling that his uncle is somehow involved. Appalled by the poverty and crime of the place he remembers fondly, he is moved to resolve the injustice of the socially marginalized and to wreak vengeance on those he believes are responsible for the death of his father. In this new episode, the young crimefighter continues to investigate the unexplained death of his father, and the robbery murder of old Rick, the candy store owner, as well as the strange new street drug, Wacky Waxx. Read more in Act 2, Scene 2, Part 3

Last but certainly not least, Colin Deerwood’s long running serial, Better Than Dead, A Detective Story, continues its unpredictable peregrinations featuring private detective Lackland Ask, aka Stan Gardner, aka Sam Carter, on the run again when he learns that his bucolic hideaway in the Three Lakes area is also where his nemesis, mob boss Yan Kovic, aka Mr. K, is ducking the feds. Now it is even more imperative that he make himself scarce, especially after a crooked local constable in league with Mr. K’s hoods try to finish him off. In the meantime, thanks to the moonshiner’s daughter and a lusty cousin, he learns a surprising revelation about his paternity. On his return to the big city from the country, still on the lam, Lackland Ask has to scare up some cash and make plans to flee the country under an assumed name with one minor hitch: he has to be blind. Read more in Better Than Dead, Episode 29.

If you’ve made it this far, click on the links above to read the entertaining serial contents of Volume Three, Number 6

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

Carriers III-IV

November 8, 2023Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk FictionCarriers, Gothic, Mark DuCharme, Pandemic, Pulp Fiction, VampiresNuallain House, Publishers

by Mark DuCharme

-III-

The sign outside the office read “LAMAR GREENWAY, M.D.” For a man of that distinction, my doctor friend was quite the character. I knocked but didn’t wait for a distracted “come in” from behind the door’s frosted pane. There was no secretary or nurse, just a one-room office with some cabinets and a door on the opposite leading to the adjoining “clinic.” Dr. Greenway slouched behind a desk in between, a cigarette dangling from fleshy lips, and a steak sandwich in one of his large hands while the other jotted notes on some stained medical record.

He looked up but didn’t smile, then looked back down to finish his note, put down his cigarette in the ashtray (overfull, as always) and— using both hands now— took a large bite from the steak sandwich, letting horseradish and a little juice dribble out the other end. The steak was rare: just the way he liked it. After hasty mastication, he swallowed, set down the repast, wiped his fingers on his trouser fronts, stood up and, leaning forward, extended his big, greasy hand, never smiling the whole time.

“Pinky! Good to see you!” I shook that hand, which was somewhat clammy, and had a looser grip than you’d expect from such an imposing figure.

Dr. Lamar Greenway was a fairly corpulent man— obese, if you want to know the truth— tall and big-boned. He carried his weight as most heavy people do, strategically, and with a kind of grace that might at times be compared to a dancer’s. It would have been hard to guess his age, but for hints of gray in the carefully groomed circular beard that ringed his surprisingly small mouth. Curly hair was abundant on his scalp and cut stylishly. A suit jacket hung off the back of his chair, threatening to pull it to the floor when he stood. His vest and pants matched that jacket’s color, but his collar was open to his loosened tie, and his sleeves were rolled up, revealing strong forearms.

“Sit down— sit down,” he beckoned, and did so himself. “What brings you in?”

I eyed him warily before I spoke. When I did, it was strategic. “Doc, I know you’re busy, and I don’t want to take up more time than I need. But I’m a little worried, and it would do me good to have a talk with you about— well, you know— some things.”

I tried to look at him with that blank expression, that unknowingness, that seemed the raw currency of the day.

He was unruffled, but gathered his thoughts, as if to appear polite. When he spoke, it was purposefully, as if he’d already had this conversation before— as if the script had been played out.

“Pinky, you know, these are troubled times.” He didn’t even look at me directly. “It’s understandable, even normal, to get a little anxious now and then.” I swallowed, then looked toward the floor, in an effort to gather my own thoughts.

“Can you tell me, Doc, what you know about this plague,” I said when I looked up.

“What do you want to know, Pinky?”

“Well, for starters, why is it so important that I deliver my cargo before dark? It seems kind of strange that—”

He cut me off officiously. “It’s company policy, Pinky. You know that as well as I do.”

“But why is it the policy? What’s the reason?” I met his gaze, and after a moment, he looked down, pausing.

“Pinky,” he replied, when he looked up soberly, still shunning my gaze, “there are things about this plague you don’t really want to know. Trust me. Some things are best left”— he paused, this time for emphasis— “to the professionals.”

“But look, I work with those— things— every day. For my own protection, Doc, I got to know,” I replied, rather proud of myself. I was playing my naïve-but-sincere card for all it was worth.

Doctor Lamar Greenway looked me straight in the pupils, but yet a little furtively, and took a long pause. Then he found his most recent cigarette stub in the rather disgusting, crowded depository, relit the nubbin, and took a longer drag off it than you’d have thought it could bear. His eyes were level, and did not avoid mine, but neither did they seek mine out. He looked weary, as if he hadn’t slept well lately.

Then he looked at me straight. There was some sort of force he had when he did that, which was quite rarely. But there it was, all the sudden, startling. He took another drag, then averted his gaze just as easily as he’d thrust it upon mine, then regathered his thoughts once more. He turned back to face me.

“I don’t know much about this plague, to tell you the truth— if that’s what you want to know.” His eyes were level, and his face would have suited a hard game of poker. It wasn’t easy to know if he was telling the truth or not, but still, I was sure he was lying. He continued.

“What I do know is mostly what we don’t. I mean the medical community.” He took another drag, then paused. “Okay, here is what I’ve seen.”

“I’ve seen patients infected with that— thing. You’ve seen those yellow eyes; I know you have. But here’s another telltale clue: the ones who have it all have two close puncture wounds. It’s kind of peculiar. Usually, they’ve got them on the neck, pretty near the jugular. But I’ve seen ‘em, and not a few times too, in other places— mostly on the inside wrists and along the inner forearms, where veins tend to bulge. Once or twice, I’ve seen ‘em on the thighs. Once, I even saw those wounds all over a corpse’s body.”

He seemed a little disgusted with himself, for just for a moment. I wondered why. But just then, he looked back up, and squarely at me. If you could say one thing of him, he was a confident bastard, though perhaps a less accomplished one than he let on.

“Look, Pinky,” he confided, “you ought not mess with such things. You don’t know what you’re dealing with. You’d best leave it be.”

“Okay, Lamar— may I call you that,” I said, smiling, trying another tactic. “Just one more thing: what can you tell me about Artemas Thorn?”

Anger crossed his face. “Just where did you hear that name?”

“Around.”

I could tell by his eyes that he didn’t buy my evasion. He made no attempt to conceal his anger this time. “Look, don’t ever say that name again, at least around me. And keep your nose out of things that don’t concern you!” He was clearly pissed off; I had overplayed my hand.

I could see that I would get no further with him now. Also, his anger had made the interview suddenly uncomfortable, so I made polite but insincere apologies and left quickly. Still, as I entered the shabby elevator— too shabby for one leading up to such a tidy, if modest, doctor’s office— I wondered just who this Thorn character was, and why so few cared to talk about him, especially if he was so prominent. And I wondered, further, why Dr. Greenway feared him— for that is what I sensed. I am normally a man who keeps to his own business. Nobody says anything to me, and I don’t say anything back: that’s what I pride myself on. But Gruber’s ravings and Doc Greenway’s fierce defensiveness were all starting to become a little unsettling. Was there really something about this Thorn character that I ought to be worried about? I mean, even if he was my landlord (and I doubted it, for I clearly recalled signing a lease with Brood Properties, LLC— oh yes, I am a man who reads all the legal documents very carefully), what could it matter? The documents I most carefully read made no mention of a Mr. Thorn. So how is it that he could have owned the room— if you want to know, it was two rooms, counting the combination living and sleeping quarters and the kitchenette; the bathroom is down the hall— that I currently occupied, and with such satisfaction? And I wondered, too, if it was really worth going to the trouble to find out.

-IV-

As it turned out, I didn’t have to wonder. When I got back to my quarters, I found a business card left too prominently on my pillow. “Artemas Thorne,” the card bearer’s name read, in very dark, red letters. I wondered now about the obvious: the Greek goddess whom the first name suggests, and the surname, thorn, something sharp. Yet it was a man’s name— the masculine variant of the spelling. I already knew Thorne was a man, whoever or whatever else he might be. And I also knew his ancient namesake was the Greek goddess of hunting. I found the name perplexing, and my reaction to it even more so. I mean, why should I care about the etymology, no doubt coincidental, of a man’s name? Yet the name itself seemed to set off all kinds of alarms that I couldn’t quite wrap my mind about.

It must have been the concierge who left that card, for how else could it have gotten there? She was an old, somewhat feeble woman, though she’d only been here maybe three years at most, and she’s most worthless at her job. I mean, it takes a good effort for her to even climb those stairs, with all that huffing and puffing. And for what? She can’t really do anything once she gets up here, to the third floor, where I live; she’s much too infirm. In fact, she rarely makes it all the way up here at all anymore. But who else could it have been? This Artemas Thorne character? But why? Even if he were the landlord— even if crazy old Gruber had been right, which I seriously doubted— why would Thorne “introduce” himself suddenly now? He can’t have known that I’d been asking about him with Doc Greenway, just a few hours before. I mean, there are rules about such things— very serious rules. Patient confidentiality and whatnot. Oh no! And further, even if he had some clue, some whiff of information, he’s still not part of the Company. The Company is very strict about the flow of information, and Doc works for the company, just like I do. We’re all employees, you see. We’re all non-carriers, dealing with carriers, and in my case, transporting them. That’s really all that any of us are: Doc diagnoses and treats; I transport. We all have our assigned roles, you see, and it’s best not to look outside too far. In any case, it’s best for me.

Yet somehow, the card both annoyed and frightened me. What right had he, for one thing— even if he were the landlord— to let himself into my chamber, or force that feeble concierge (Mrs. Dittleboffer was her name) to climb those harrowing flights, only to deposit a stiff, off-white piece of rectangular cardstock in blood-red font upon my very pillow? I vowed then and there to ignore such an impolite intrusion and to take Gruber’s advice (which in this instance, might have been rather sage after all, I now judged) and seek no further this Mr. Artemas Thorne, this remarkably mysterious but somehow prominent man, whom some at least knew and feared.

I would have lived up to my vow, I am certain, were it not for the chain of events that intervened.

Deep in the night, I was awakened by an urgent knock at my door. Although somewhat groggy from the sudden transition between dreams and waking, I am proud to report that I leapt up promptly, and as promptly (though not without some slight stumbling) made my way to the entry to my quarters, from whence I had heard the rude interruption. I unlatched the bolt, then blinked at the light which greeted my eyes, so unaccustomed was I in that moment even to the brightness of the grayly dim hallway bulb.

A figure was standing there, with the light behind its unlit face. In the few seconds it took my eyesight to adjust, and my still rather imbalanced mental state to attempt the abrupt transition from hazy consciousness and dreams, I tried to gather my wits and focus my vision. When I had done at least the latter, I noticed that the hazy figure, when seen more carefully, was, though a mysterious sight, not an altogether unpleasant one. Some might have called her comely, though after such an abrupt awakening, I confess no adjectives immediately were at my disposal. She was brunette and slender, wearing a gray suit jacket and skirt and black heels, and had an urgent expression, unlike most you see on the street these days.

“What is it,” I managed to get out.

I recall that her mood the whole time was grave and impatient.

“May I come in?”

I should have asked more questions, but my thoughts weren’t quite connected to my voice yet.

I nodded, and she crossed the threshold with a heel click and then turned to me, her large brown eyes clearly conveying a practiced note of distress. Her perfume was a sickly sweet jasmine that crowded out the air. “My father’s not answering his door,” she said, with a tone that matched her body language.

I tried to compose myself, though in fact I was just starting to realize that I needed rather badly to pee, and furthermore that I was somewhat hungry. I decided to try to cut the rude interview short.

“What does that have to do with me?”

“Well, aren’t you Johnny?”

She had called me “Johnny.” My name’s not Johnny. It isn’t Pinky, either. That’s when I knew she was Gruber’s daughter. No one else ever calls me Johnny.

“What happened,” I asked. The shock of seeing her had slowly started to awaken me.

She looked at me with those brown eyes again, but they seemed warmer now. She smiled. I had nothing to fear, I thought. But then, a more grave demeanor overtook her.

“My dad isn’t answering the door,” she explained, expecting me to figure out what I already had.

“What do you want from me?” It was a reasonable question, but her answer wasn’t.

“Help me break it down.”

I was taken aback. I didn’t know this woman at all, and all the sudden she was asking me to break into someone’s apartment to find out if its occupant, her father she claimed, was alright. Furthermore, though I confess I was strangely drawn to her, I was also equally a bit distrustful of her, and even repelled by her company. Moreover, I had my position at the Company to consider. I mean, breaking through a man’s own oaken door in the dead of night just might have consequences— just might!

“Why should I risk that?” The question was what I was thinking, though I hadn’t intended to let it blurt out so frankly.

“Why not?” She smiled, in a way that I thought alluring but still set me on edge. And it was then that I really noticed the scarlet-red, lipsticked smile on a surprisingly death-pale face framed by shoulder-length, jet-black hair, straight and silky.

“Okay,” I said. I don’t know why I said it. She smiled some more.

Bursting through that goddamned, thick, oaken door nearly killed me.

Next Time: Gruber No More (Or The Plague Next Door)

Cheése Stands Alone XI

November 8, 2023Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionAirship Commander, Cheese Stands Alone, Clockwork Commenwealth, Crime Fiction, IOTA, Jean-Pierre Serre Pain, Lydia Cheése, Pax Victoriana, Pulp Fiction, Pyare, Serpina, SteampunkNuallain House, Publishers

by Phylis Huldarsdottir

Cast of Characters (Partial):

Serpina, a young girl who serves as Serre-Pain’s assistant and snake handler and who is also a psychic Vessel.

Vlady, an older bearlike man also in the employ of Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium and a traveling circus strongman Lydia recognizes from her past.

Chief Inspector Karla Kola, head of the IOTA squad charged with capturing Commodore Jack Cheése and Lydia’s nemesis and pursuer.

Chapter XXV

Lydia felt dirty. She hadn’t washed in days, really washed bio clean in weeks. Her pores were caked. And a hard rain was falling, chilling the air and blocking the light. They had made it to the chapel just as the rain began. The primary reason the chapel was abandoned was that it did not have a roof. A stone archway and overgrown trellis provided a refuge of sorts out of the rain from the downpour. Pyare had removed the slot velo’s bioweave tarpaulin from the boot and they clustered under it as large drops splashed in the pooling rain at their feet.

Serpina had withdrawn into herself, huddled, arms folded acrost her chest. Pyare was agitated, scowling and fidgeting. They had hidden their vehicles in the underbrush overtaking the crumbling stone walls at the edge of a deep darker wood. Now they awaited a let up in the weather. They could travel cross country following the occasional stream or animal track and the contours of the landscape keeping to a southwest direction. They would undoubtedly run into clansmen. Everything depended on which of the clans they encountered. If they were Fourierists or Communards, there could be a problem. Briefly that was Pyare’s plan and he assured Lydia that he had an acutely sensitive sense of direction.

Lydia had not been impressed. With the best of luck it would take them at least two days to reach Autre Lyons. The biobars were not enough to sustain them over that time.

“We’ll have to go raw,” he’d offered cavalierly, “We’ll forage, berries, wild fruit, gardens, maybe even fish.”

The thought still alarmed her. Organic material. Lydia shuddered.

Why am I here? She stared at her hands clasped before her around her knees. It was simple enough, or started out that way. She remembered her father as the most reasonable of men, except. There was a flash point. She’d heard stories, and witnessed once while her grandmother, Brie, was dying, the incredible energy of his anger. The last time she saw him was when he wished her good luck as she left to train at the Admiralty Air Academy. Brie had passed the year before and left her son a small fortune, large even by Commonwealth standards. He was never around much, traveling. She never really knew him as an adult. And now ten years later she was a hunted fugitive because she was looking for him.

Jack Cheése had retired as a ranking officer in the Admiralty Medical Corps, a top bio research clinician with the rank of Commodore, as had been his father, Harvey T., and the aged patriarch, great grandfather Bart who had been in the forefront in the fight against the global black mold infestation and variant spoors which some had claimed was an invasion from a hostile planet, disproved by great grandfather and his formulated bacterial strain that neutralized the spread of the invasive rapidly reproducing mold. Bart was one of the heroes of Pandem One, as they called it, a team of men in white lab coats conducting tests, analyzing, experimenting, failing, succeeding, and finally producing a strain that would stop the replication. From that work a number of novel bacterial strains were developed and later refined to serve industry and society. A second outbreak, long after the great Bart had retired, of a mutating fractal variant that further devastated large regions of the globe, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, wiping out vast tracts of forests and grass lands down to mineral soil. Grandfather, Harvey T, was involved in what was dubbed Pandem Two, but primarily in research on the campus of the Mendel Institute for Biological Research which had developed the reproductive drive, the technology that revolutionized modern airship transportation. She had never learned what her father’s work involved only that it was top secret. His retirement from the Corps was unexpected, hardly anyone retired from the Admiralty, but was attributed to his mother’s death.

When she returned at holiday break after her first semester she found him gone, He had disappeared, leaving not a word. His friends in Rio Paulo were mystified. Everyone feared the worst, an accident. Polite inquiries were made with the police, hospitals, a missing person’s report filed. IOTA was notified as he was a retired Admiralty officer. The men in the black hats had interviewed her, asking their probing insinuating questions. She was put off by their arrogant demeanor.

And then it was time to return to the Academy overlooking the dunes of Gdansk. She’d considered dropping out when she received a message in the most unlikely place. She had wandered into a bookstore in a plaza near the family home in Rio Rio which everyone pronounced Rio-io. She was browsing for something to keep her mind off the worry for her missing father and resigning her dream of becoming an airship captain.

She’d picked up a book titled Don’t Tell Anyone, the story of an illicit affair late in the reign of the Queen, around the time of her rapprochement with her nephew, Wilhelm. It was by the bestselling Commonwealth author Anthony Blair, also available on voice box. It was on a table display of a new memoir of a Panam War veteran titled, I Am Alive. She was also attracted by a rather bold spine that read Have Faith in large gilt letters.

Lydia had returned to the Triple A, as the cadets called it, and resumed her studies and training under the sponsorship of the Brazilian airship behemoth, Aerosud Luxury Air Ships. Friends in Rio Rio kept her apprised of any news of which there was none. Jack Cheése had disappeared without a trace. The Emperor’s secret service had closed its investigation. She had friends and in-laws at the Court in Nova Brasilia because of her Guzman connection, her husband being one of that royal clan. No one knew anything or was saying anything if they knew. He was missing and presumed dead.

She had graduated at the top of her class with distinction as well as a gold medal in combat arts in her final year, defeating the reigning champion, her Russair rival, Karla Kola. Her compulsory two year service in the Admiralty Air Corps was spent in an intelligence brigade stationed at the Clockwork Commonwealth’s embassy compound in Greater Houllas in the Slave State Republic of Texas in charge of the lighter than air transport pens, an assignment certainly well below her abilities. She did distinguish herself during the Bushwhacker Rebellion, ferrying hostages to safety after the ceasefire. She should have been stationed at the Admiralty Headquarters in Greater London, but that post went to Karla Kola, her raven haired nemesis. The feeling that she had been singled out, sidelined, isolated from the real intelligence action stayed with her through her service. Upon discharge she began her career as an airship pilot, rising in rank to Captain with the honorific of Commander when she was put in charge of the large luxury dirigibles.

It was while she was stationed in Greater Houllas that she’d first heard the rumors of an anti-government agitator known as Commodore Jack. She had gone to the favelas that had grown up around Greater Houllas and found herself in an early American artifact shop. The shopkeeper, obviously a native with long white hair and a scar on his forehead, had eyed her suspiciously. She browsed among the artifacts of the old West, native bead work and antique weapons, arrowheads and real skin moccasins. On the door to the shop was an announcement for a boxcast titled The Queen Is Light, The Victorian Mirage, one whose subject would be banned in the CC, by an underground boxcaster who went by the name of Commodore Jack. She noted that the broadcast was on a prohibited band, one most certainly monitored by IOTA as not only was it illegal to tune in to the frequency but it required some illegal modifications to the box receiver filter. In the lawless USSR, those prohibitions were regularly ignored, despite the treaty with the Crown.

The modifications were easy enough to make on an unsanctioned box she bought on the black market. She recognized the voice of the boxcast immediately and it shock her so that she had to power down the device. Once the spinning of her thoughts subsided and the realization that it was her father’s voice, she tuned back in to the banned frequency. Yes, it was her father spewing toxic chemtrails, a soup of gibberish antigovernment conspiracy theories and ICER propaganda, and invective against the royal family, especially the crown prince, Victor, whom Commodore Jack claimed was a hologram. It was trash and she was mortified that it was in her father’s voice. She soon learned, after discrete inquiries, that Commodore Jack’s boxcasts were immensely popular in the unaffiliated states of North America and on the African and Indian subcontinents. She couldn’t comprehend that her father would subscribe to such sloppy thinking and base idiocy. It disgusted her.

Nonetheless, she was determined to find him. Perhaps he had been kidnapped by anti-monarchists and rebel environmentalists who were predicting a climate change that would cover the earth in glaciers. She felt that she had to talk to him, convince him of his error, and if all else failed, commit him to a care facility in Rio Rio. Her first inquiries resulted in visits from the men in the black hats with more of their insinuations. She realized then that she was under surveillance by IOTA.

She had hit upon a solution. She remembered that her father read the London Tines, a micro-macro manufactured food gastro culture magazine, religiously. He read every word even the classified ads at the back of the magazine. She had placed her notice asking for information to his whereabouts using her father’s childhood nickname of “Pepper” along with a tidy reward to be paid in Victorines.

The answer had come in the person of Jean-Pierre Sere Pain and his itinerant medicine snake show at which point she was effectively kidnapped to pilot an unregistered airship from the vicinity of Autre Lyons to Djibouti in the Horn Of Africa Republic, a rat’s nest of air pirates, Icers, and anti-Commonwealth discontents, on a mission of mercy. In return for her assistance, she would be reunited with her father or at least receive assurances of his proof of life.

Which was how she found herself listening to the rain beat on the tarp covering her and her two companions and watching pearls of light form along its frayed edge.

Chapter XXVI

A house stood attended by large oaks and surrounded by a gaggle of geese, picking and rooting and disputing loudly suddenly alert to their presence. The house was quiet in itself and a lazy canopy of smoke hovered about the chimney and indicated that it was inhabited. The road leading up to it appeared well traveled and as Lydia and her companions drew closer they could make out a faded signboard hanging over the entrance. It depicted a lion and a bear in an embrace, either dancing or fighting. The geese raised a ruckus and reared back with their wings flapping in challenge to the intruders.

The trio had spent the previous day slogging through the underbrush. Once the rain had let up, they had left the soggy shelter of the abandoned chapel, their destination, the vague misty shape of the steep sided razorback ridge of the upper Massif. They made their way slowly, laboriously, climbing higher, scurrying across the barren fields from copse to copse of trees and in the shadows of large boulders. They’d watched the air activity taking place below, close to where they had just left, from their vantage point on the steep hillside. The gendarmes had deployed observation blimps and light gliders that circled over the tree tops like birds of prey.

Once the sun went down, they had had to take shelter under a rock outcropping on the upside of the slope. The bio energy bars had long been devoured and their trek having itself devoured the consumed energy, they ended up hungrier than ever. Fortunately Pyare had had the presence of mind to roll up the tarp, slinging it over his shoulder, and they huddled under it, keeping close to each other and sharing their exhaustion and sweaty body heat.

The earthy scents assailed Lydia’s nostrils. It reminded her of bivouacking with the other cadets in her squad at the Air Academy. It had been pleasant because of the camaraderie of her peers. And she didn’t dream that years later she’d ever be called to experience exposure to the elements again. She didn’t feel like making small talk, numb as she was from the encroaching cold. And Pyare’s enthused optimism had retreated to dour brooding. Yet Serpina’s physical closeness to the young man had turned her cheeks rosy, eyes half closed as if she were seeing something at a distance.

The discomfort of the makeshift shelter had caused them to continuously shift position and displace previously advantageous perches in trying to seek some comfort on the rough rocky ground. Finally, Pyare rolled himself up into a ball and Serpina spooned him, Lydia having no other choice but to wrap her arms and the trap around both of them.

First light found them cresting a ridge and staring down into a rough rock strewn valley coursed with ravines and fissures. Conifers and oak groves dotted the rolling expanse as clumps of bright greenery.

Serpina had pointed down to a layer of smoke hovering above a row of oaks. There was a small settlement in the crook of a paved road. They knew that they could get food in the village but also ran the risk of being detained by the local militia. They’d agreed to keep to the fields and the hillside, avoiding the inhabitants if at all possible. They could easily be mistaken for refugees and turned over to the authorities.

Pyare had gone ahead of them to reconnoiter, looking for a farm or an orchard where food might be found. He’d returned shortly grinning, a smear of purple around his mouth. He had found an abandoned vineyard and had retrieved a few clusters of grapes the birds and animals had missed.

Serpina had plucked the fruit eagerly. Lydia was a little more cautious. Ingesting unprocessed organic matter was something she was not wild about. She had brought the deep purple pearl to her nose to gauge its scent, but that told her nothing. She put it in her mouth and rolled it around her taste buds. Earthy, but then she was covered in dirt so why should it matter. She bit down. The liquid that filled her mouth shocked her and she’d almost spit it out. A sweet sourish taste that wasn’t entirely unpleasant led her to sample a few more until she was no longer concerned that the fruit was not factory grown.

Somewhat refreshed they’d followed a stream from which Lydia had wet a handkerchief to wipe some of the dirt from her face but according to Serpina’s comments, now her face was streaked with mud and she looked like a wild savage.

It was about then that they crossed a little stone bridge to find themselves before the public house at the sign of the bear and the lion guarded by a flock of geese. Accompanying the honking fowl was the aroma of cooking food which hasten their advance at the behest of their stomachs.

Lydia in the lead paid no heed to Pyare’s comment that they were about to encounter one of the clans, the most dreaded of them all, the Ancient Order of the Phalange, if the sign board said what he thought it meant.

Next Time: The Ancient Order Has An Odor

Act Two, Scene 2, Part 3

November 8, 2023Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk FictionCrime Fiction, Crimefighter, Just Coincidence, Pierre Anton Taylor, Wayne BruceNuallain House, Publishers

by Pierre Anton Taylor

Charlotte Taste was an enigma. She and her brother, Larry, were among the wealthiest siblings, barring royalty, in the world. Her wealth was old while Wayne was a second generation captain of industry, part time daredevil and rock climber, and himself an enigma. They’d been attracted to each other, he, not all that personable or outgoing as the old man, always on the sell, and she, just the opposite, impulsive, ready to jump at any opportunity, of which he was one, dark, brooding, masculine. She did not share his interest in high risk sports. Her high adventures were mostly cerebral. And she ran with a jet-setting Euro-trash crowd of minor aristocrats always on the lookout for new thrills and new playgrounds. Yet they gelled as a complimentary couple, as that was how they were depicted on the society page. “Post-debutante and popular hostess Lottie Taste seen here with young Wayne Bruce, antique car collector, world traveler, and Bruce Enterprise’s VP of Research and Development, having recently returned from a mining exploration in Mali for his daddy, Wallace “Battery Man” Bruce.”

Wayne had been all set to take his place on the board of directors and help steer Bruce Enterprise into the future. He was encouraged by Linus Pall, a member of the board, and the old man’s lawyer physician advisor. Linus was also Charlotte and Larry’s guardian and manager of their trust, having served in a similar capacity to the Tastes.

It would be easy to say they’d cooked it up, but Pall and old Dad thought that he and Charlotte should enter society as a married couple as an assurance to the stockholders that the company was in stable hands and the future of BE was in stable settled hands of someone intent on making a family. He had been struck silent by their proposition although not necessarily put off. After some good natured cajoling from his two elders, he agreed to consider the option of marriage. Pall insisted in leaking the news to the gossip column as soon as he got word he’d proposed to Charlotte.

Charlotte was coy, finding it quite funny and assuring him that she wasn’t laughing at him when he told her of the plan, but at the two old match makers so out of touch, it another fifteen years it would be the turn of the century and they were acting like some feudal lords. Yet she had agreed that it was a good idea because she felt safe when he was around.

He’d left for Mali shortly after the announcement and when he returned everything had changed.

A mottled metal service door creaked open and a dark shape exited in a shaft of light and heat before the door closed again. A flame lit the profile of a chin and nose, smoke inhaled and exhaled.

The wind coursing down the brick canyons of the deserted industrial district rattled the air vents on the roof where he was perched. Once he’d recovered from the landing and gathered his gear, he rappelled down the brick wall of the old cotton factory to the street below. The street lights had been neglected or damaged and except for the ambient light glancing off of stretched of drifted snow and plowed berms, shadows engulfed the deserted road.

He had questioned Bion about the drug operation he’d encountered in locating the drug laced Whacky Waxx. Being an ex-Marine, the black man was familiar with the particulars of reconnaissance. Besides, he’d laughed, everyone knew where the factory was or had moved to because no one can keep a secret. Some people just have to brag and word gets around.

Something else Bion related had caught his attention. The drug lab was under Joe Kerr’s protection, and whenever the narcotics squad raided a location, they always came up empty handed. The word was that Penn Quinn, the owner of the tavern directly across from the Old Battery Works, had somebody, a relative, on the police force, who always had information for sale. He acted as the middle man, the man in the know, for a cut of the action.

Wayne had been suspicious of Quinn from the beginning, a pair shaped man, bald as a seal. His tavern was a den of thieves and trouble makers from the rural lands on the outskirts of the district. He’d had Robin do a deep dive into the property and business records of Quinn’s Tavern. It had potential and he could consider purchasing it and turning it into a restaurant or diner catering to visitors at the Wallace Bruce Memorial Park and Antique Motor Car Museum, change the T in the name to a C as in Cavern.

He’d watched from the shadows of an alleyway. A mottled metal service door creaked open and a dark shape exited in a shaft of light and heat before the door closed again. A flame lit the profile of a chin and nose, smoke inhaled and exhaled. Wayne had come across lookouts at the front of the building and a car with a motor running down the street. If they were narcs they weren’t very subtle, but likely they were just one more layer of eyes around the perimeter. The man at the front entrance had stamped his feet in the after midnight below zero cold.

According to Bion, the factory was on the third floor of the abandoned apartment building. With few exceptions all the windows were boarded over with plywood. He had tested the rough brick edifice for irregularities gaging potential for toe holds and finger grips. He was just about to begin the climb when the door opened.

He recognized J-van by the size and the profile in the flicker of flame, and if he was at the drug factory so was I-van, out of the hospital and crutches. It would double his pleasure to put them out of business. I-van’s threat to kill old Rick still echoed in his recent memory.

J-van banged on the door with his secret knock after he’d tossed the cigarette butt. Wayne had waited until the door closed behind the large man to reestablish his grip on a nub of rough brick to begin his climb up the sheer face of the building.

When he’d voiced his suspicions about the circumstances surrounding his father’s death to Detective Gordon James, the older man had listened politely. His advice was to leave these matters to the professionals. For one, they would not be invested in following a narrative that was not based on the facts of the evidence. Speculation was out of their purview. His hands were tied in reopening the investigation. Hearsay was not enough. He could have the body exhumed but that would take a court order for which there was no real evidence or it could be requested by the surviving spouse in the absence of evidence, and even them the result woold likely prove inconclusive. Wayne already knew that Trish would never agree to it.

On the climb up, a toe perched on the ledge beneath a boarded window, he was able to peer through a crack between the planks. A dim light shown at a distance but not enough to discern anything but shadows. And finally gaining the roof burdened with piles of snow and ice, he had carefully made his way across the field of pipes and vent hoods. What looked like the remnants of a rooftop garden confirmed his suspicion that the roof was accessed from the interior of the building. A puddle was visible around the base of one of the exhaust vents emitting a sour fetid heat. He assumed it was coming from the drug factory below. Cigarette butts littered the old mounds of snow and ice and the frozen impression of footprints led to a door inset into the brick chimney enclosure.

He examined the metal fire door and the frame. It was almost as old as the bricks surrounding it, and just as sturdy. There didn’t appear to be an outside handle. The door had to be opened from the inside. He tried prying along the edges and the bottom on the chance it was not secure, but it wouldn’t budge. The smokers must have propped the heavy door open when they took their rooftop break. He considered dropping over the side and gaining access by removing boards from a window but the possibility of discovery was too great.

Wayne had come equipped for a different plan. From the small backpack that fit between his shoulder blades, he extracted a small vial of prank oil, often called skunk oil and sold in novelty shops along with poo-poo cushions and itch powder. Old Rick had a rack of such fare in a dusty corner of the candy store. He recalled the old black man complaining that the gag items never sold, that they were just there because Kerr’s sales rep made him carry them.

Also from the backpack, he recovered a spray can of insulating foam from the construction site at the old Battery Works. He unstopped the vial of noxious oil and prying one of the louvres on the ventilation hood open, reached in and poured the entire contents into the duct. He turned his attention to the exhaust vent, spraying foam into the opening, the white polyurethane billowing like a cloud of whipped cream effectively sealing the vent.

Wayne placed himself to one side of the door and waited. First he heard bumping and banging followed by shouts. He could tell by the noise that someone was trying to break open a window from the inside. Then he heard the distinct trample of feet on stairs amidst more yelling and retching when suddenly the door to the roof burst open. One person flew out the door, bent over, coughing, followed by another, almost crawling on all fours, gasping for breath, and running blindly into the first.

He slipped past them and descended into the brightly lit factory space, a filter mask over his mouth and nose. A woman, hair bound in a kerchief and wearing a dusty grey smock, was on her hands and knees, vomiting, He could understand why. Even with the specially designed nostril inserts, the smell of the skunk oil was nauseating. He wasted no time. Removing the thin cylinder of a battery operated atomizer from a pocket, he directed the spray at the powdery substance near a set of scales. The effect on the drug was almost instantaneous. The white powder turned an orange hue, a chemical process akin to oxidization that rendered the substance useless. He searched the surrounding tables and benches of the makeshift factory for more of the product. What he found were more Whacky Waxx wrappers and a hot plate on which a pot of a waxy substance bubbled. He ripped open a few more bags of the powdery drug and emptied them onto the table, and sprayed it with his chemical neutralizer.

The sobbing, retching woman had gotten to her feet and when she caught sight of him, screamed, knocking over the wax works as she ran for the exit at the far side of the lab. Wayne took a last look around at his handiwork and sprinted up the stairs to the roof. The two men on the roof had recovered some, coughing and wheezing, but didn’t know what to make of him, yet roused themselves to come after him. Just as one of them was close enough to grab him, Wayne dropped over the side of the roof, the man almost following him over. The line he had secured there held, and he let himself be guided down the length of rope in a quick repel.

The commotion had brought a crowd of factory workers and residents of the derelict squat milling around outside in the freezing AM street. There was loud talking and exclamation of disgust and a lot of swearing. Wayne slipped from shadow to shadow distancing himself from the scene as the men on the roof were shouting warnings of the intruder to those below. But it was too late. The damage had been done, and he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do.

The reasoning behind the stealth of his action, the risky wingsuit flight from the penthouse, other than another opportunity to recharge the adrenaline, was that he was certain he was being watch, followed. Even as he made his way to the Battery Work along the deserted streets, the sirens wailing in the distance, fire and police, he stayed out of sight, reversing his path, scaling walls, cutting through alleys. He saw no one, but then the temperatures were freezing in the dark AM.

The alert doorman at the Regency had made a comment in passing as he’d exited the lobby out to his waiting car recently. Wayne had greeted the man with his customary “what’s new?” but this time rather than replying “every day is a gift,” the doorman had observed that the phone company was back fixing the problem they hadn’t fixed the last time, giving a slight nod of his head in the direction of the pale blue van near the open manhole across the street. A man in olive green coveralls had emerged from the service access. Something didn’t fit about the manner of the man and who he was supposed to be. He had a sixth sense about these things. He was not a workman, an engineer perhaps, upper management, but not your run of the mill tech.

He’d asked his secretary once he got to his office at Bruce Enterprise to check with the phone company and inquire about any telephone repair work being done in the vicinity of the Regency Arms. The reply came back negative. And when he used his own transportation to travel around the city and out to the Battery Works site, he’d begun noticing a pattern of utilitarian vehicles floating up into his rearview and then dropping away to be replaced by different yet similar sedans with maximum horse power under the hood. Someone was investing a lot of manhours in tracking his routine which varied little, occupied with the business of renovation at the old Battery factory and his duties overseeing the BATS Lab. On the other hand, there were some activities he didn’t want others to know about.

Wayne approached the silent darkness of Penn Quinn’s Tavern, a red neon knot in one window flickering. The two story brick building consisted of the bar and some storage space on the bottom floor and a quartet of residential units above the business. One of those apartments looked out across the intersection where Central butted into Battery and directly across from the candy store, its door and windows boarded in plywood to prevent vandalism. The graffiti was to be expected. It was from that window above Quinn’s Tavern that the witness claimed to have seen someone, a kid, exiting the store after old Rick was shot.

He loped across the dark street and into the alleyway behind the candy store and down to his access over the wall to the newly refurbished Lab satellite office building where he kept a private suite that included a wardrobe and facilities with a whirlpool tub.

He had taken to prowling the neighborhood, often in disguise, and at night, trying to get a feel for the dereliction and neglect that poverty had visited on the once thriving district. What he saw was petty crime and the hooligans that perpetrated it. A few times he had stepped in and thwarted whatever lawlessness he could, but he was not the police. Nor was the police much in evidence especially as the nights grew darker and colder. The press had stopped obsessing about the outlaw vigilante terrorizing the citizenry. And listening to Bion and the construction crew, he could gauge what the word on the street was saying about a foiled robbery at a mom and pop grocery store or a scotched mugging. The bad guys were a little more cautious in their criminal activities and looking over their shoulders for the phantom in black who would put the hurt on them in no uncertain terms.

Wayne was awakened by the alarm clock early that morning before the crew arrived to begin work. He started the coffee and turned on the television in what would eventually be the employee lounge. The morning news show was working a breaking story and had gone live to the scene of a three alarm fire in the industrial district. As the on-scene camera panned across the flashing lights of the fire equipment and the fire fighters directed their hoses at the smoke and flames erupting from the upper story, he knew immediately what he was looking at. It was the building he had left several hours ago, the Whacky Waxx drug factory. The on scene reporter was telling the camera that three bodies had been located in the abandoned building as it had been being used by squatters seeking shelter from the cold. Firefighters were conducting a search for more victims but were hampered by toxic smoke possibly from chemicals illegally stored on the premises. They believed that the fire was started by an overturned hot plate.

Wayne stared out the window at Bion sliding open the gate to allow the crew access to the grounds of the Battery Works. The realization that he was at least partially responsible for those deaths alighted on his shoulders like a dark winged specter.

-VIII-

-IV-

Next Time: The Letter Inside The Letter

Chapter XVII

Next Time: The Tides Of History

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Eight of Dime Pulp,A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

A Don Coyote & Saundra Pansy Mystery

i

ii

Next time: la bola desnuda or don’t go bowling naked

Is there a sequel in the making? Featuring The Red Empress, The Blindman, The Owl, and Mr. K? Stay tuned to Dime Pulp, The Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine!

-v-

-vi-

-vii-

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Seven of Dime Pulp,A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

-III-

-IV-

Next Time: Gruber No More (Or The Plague Next Door)

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Next Time: The Ancient Order Has An Odor

Next Time: Interlude

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Eight of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Seven of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.