by Byron Craft
The two quickly rose to their feet and fled the office. It was more than Kim’s screaming that motivated the tall man with the scar to race to her aid. He heard additional sounds on the other end of the cell call. It could not be the result of a deranged wife, attempting to manipulate the attention of her spouse. No ventriloquist could master what he had just heard. In the background, was talking, occurring simultaneously with Mrs. Darby’s pleas for help, the low chattering of other voices, whispers in a darkened house.
***
The airbags were deployed, and the proximity alarm squealed. The speed of the Mercedes S-Class Sedan was defeated by abrupt impact with the grand staircase. The left headlamp, still intact, illuminated the foyer and parlor of Darby Manor. The still spinning fan blades of the luxury auto’s cooling system complained with a metallic screech when slammed against the radiator. Through the driver’s side window, the tall man with the scar and Malcolm Darby gaped at a trio of hideous dwarfs, no more than two-feet tall, dragging the unconscious form of Mrs. Darby toward the rear of the house. A fourth stood trapped in the car’s single high beam. They watched as the gangrenous flesh of the thing smoked and then burst into a flaming mass of epidermis. Less than a second elapsed while tall man squinted his eyes shut and shook his head to clear his mind of the image. Eyes re-opened, the little imp was gone and along with its three companions, leaving their captive behind.
***
The tall man with the scar sat in the ladder-back chair within the Darby Manor parlor. He had turned off all the lights in the house. It was pitch black. Mrs. Darby had been taken away in an ambulance to a private hospital. She was still unconscious, almost comatose. Malcolm, playing the role of the dedicated husband, accompanied her. Besides himself, the house was empty, well almost.
Clawed feet scuttled across the carpet. The sound of puppies at play? The disturbing clatter of a raccoon home invasion or worse? The tall man heard swishes, tissue paper tearing? Whispers in the dark? More than one voice. They were close. He could feel their foul breath on the back of his neck as they climbed the rungs of the chair behind him.
“Not lady,” one hissed.
“Take him, need new brother,” breathed another utterance.
A third voice sizzled, “Stick with claws, make sleep like lady.”
“Take below, make like us,” all rustled and taunted.
Earlier that day, the tall man with a scar visited the hardware store in the local village and stocked up on incandescent floodlights and extension cords. A merry string of them circled the parlor pointing to the center of the room where he sat. An electric cord with a line switch strung across his lap. He felt the clawed hand of corrupt flesh on his neck. “Sleep my body,” it shushed in his ear.
The tall man with a scar flexed a thumb and turned the cord switch. The parlor filled with the blinding glare of a dozen 250-watt lights. The hideous demons from the depths of Darby Manor no longer whispered. A chorus of three burst into mortal shrieks of terror. His first impression was of a donkey’s bray mixed with the squeal of a pig. The sounds of their cries quickly morphed into unholy wails from the bowels of the underworld.
The retinal after image cast upon his pupils subsided in time for him to witness the homunculus threesome from hell burst into flames and fall to the carpet in smoldering heaps of pulp.
***
Malcolm Darby, the next morning, didn’t seem to mind that his new carpeting was ruined by flaming gnomes. The tall man with the scar got the impression that Darby Manor would no longer become their place of residence. As added insurance, tall man had bolted the cast iron plate back over the hearth opening, sealing the depths below, he hoped, for decades to come. As commissioned, Darby had brought along his checkbook. He wrote out the amount with a flourish seemingly pleased with himself as well as the writing of the payment. The tall man assumed that Malcolm Darby, a man of great wealth, got immense pleasure in handing out large sums of money to the astonished underclass. He was probably also glad that the task had been fulfilled. Mrs. Darby had been committed. She appeared to be in a continual state of shock, “catatonic, unresponsive,” he had been told. As for Malcolm Darby, tall man hoped that he would have the opportunity to meet him again someday on less amicable grounds. Nevertheless, the fee was substantial and would allow him to pursue a quest in the Mojave he had been planning for some time.
Smiling, Malcolm shook his hand, “You destroyed my Mercedes, the front entrance to the Manor and managed to ruin our carpet in the process, but you got the job done better than any man could. Your skills and ability seem to come naturally to you.”
“As my great grandfather, from Arkham used to say, I investigate any and all things that go bump in the night.'"
Chapter 6
- Pemba -
The bad man chased her down the streets of Norwood. It was not a racial thing. He was after her purse or worse. Some places in Europe were prejudice because of her dark skin, but not in the United Kingdom, in Norwood. Pemba had been running, at a good lick, for the past fifteen minutes or so and she was only partially winded. Typical of the Mandé people from Africa, she was tall, long-limbed with an athletic build. The man after her, although several yards behind, must have been in decent shape as well, because he had kept up the pace for a while, but now was no longer in sight.
Only a few minutes more and Pemba would be in the safety of her home. She had been returning from her bank, after securing a wire transfer from America, when a white man dressed in black approached her. “I’ll take the money, Pemba,” he demanded. The robber pointed a long thin-bladed knife at her stomach. Pemba kicked him hard in the left shin and ran like hell. Leaning against a signpost that designated the West Norwood Station bus stop she took a deep breath and was about to resume her trek when she realized that the bad man called her by name. Who was he? His voice rang of a Manchester dialect. She clearly recalled his facial features. Never met the man previously, Pemba determined.
Pemba had been staying with Professor David Hambling of Norwood University, and his wife, for over a month. They were very helpful to Pemba and assisted her in negotiating a commission from the States. She had received five-thousand U.S. dollars to travel to a locale in California; Pemba had never heard of the place. A professor, a physicist to be precise, had hired her to help with research on a local phenomenon. Professor Hambling had assured her that the man in America was well known in their professional circle and was certain to be honorable. Hambling had located Pemba, with the aid of some colleagues in South Africa and emailed his associate in the USA about her abilities.
Pemba was an empath. There are several types of empaths who employ different psychic traits; Pemba’s were multi-faceted, unique. She not only could feel another person’s emotions, but Pemba could also receive energy, information in the form of impressions from objects, images and on rare occasions places. And, rarer still, with certain receptive minds, simpler ones, she could control their actions.
“I'm sweatin' cobs 'ere, duck; chuck it now and give us the brass.” Pemba turned with a start. A momentary rest, on her part, became her undoing. She had leaned away from the signpost to see if her pursuer was coming into view. If he did, she would once again make a mad long-legged dash toward home. There was still no sign of him on the sidewalk. Instead, he had gone around and between the neighboring houses to come face to face with his victim.
He took hold of the strap on her purse and jabbed the point of his knife against her throat. A slight trickle of blood ran down the blade. Their eyes met. Pemba didn’t want to think about the man. She wanted to scream but feared it would drive his knife deeper. Instead, she sensed his anger, also fear. A dark fear that drove him to kill. Her body became cold; her mind was a fire. She had to make the anger, and especially the fear go away. No feelings at all. No will.
The thief let go of Pemba’s purse and dropped the knife. He stepped off the curb into the oncoming number 249 red double-decker. The bus driver slammed on the brakes, but not soon enough
to avoid running over the man in black.
Chapter 7
- Ironwood -
Ironwood saw a ghost. A handful of residents in Darwin claimed to see ghosts, but he was in Ridgecrest, a city of twenty-seven thousand plus and it was broad daylight. Besides, ghosts to a scientist was a bunch of hogwash. He had been stocking up on provisions at the East Ridge Market to take back to his abandoned desert town retreat when he saw him. Professor Thomas Ironwood had just finished placing his groceries in the back seat of his Willys Jeepster when he spied a military vehicle parked at the gas pumps. It was barely past nine o’clock in the morning, and it was already ninety-five degrees in the shade. Ironwood tossed his denim jacket in with the sacks of groceries and walked toward the vehicle.
Curiosity had gotten the better of the Professor. He had been working for the military for several years, the US Navy, and had never seen a vehicle quite like that one. Ironwood stopped, stood momentarily in the hot sun and rolled up the sleeves of his Levi western snap-up shirt. It was a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle like the current crop of Humvees, but that was where the similarity ended. The vehicle was boxier than the old Hummers; a four-seat variant with a companion trailer. The trailer contained a large load concealed by a canvas tarpaulin held in place with tie-down straps. Two men sat up front, their desert tan camo clothing blending them almost invisible within the vehicle. One of them was blond, sturdily built; the number two man, had sandy colored hair and was not as stocky as the other, but appeared to be very muscular.
Ironwood removed his straw cowboy hat, wiped his sweaty brow with a red bandana handkerchief and took a few steps closer. A sense, an impression told him that there was something about that sandy-haired man he needed to investigate. His head was down, and he was touching the dashboard repeatedly with his index finger. He was probably entering a location, an address into the truck’s GPS, Ironwood assumed. When the man in camo sat up straight in the driver’s seat, Ironwood froze. It was Alan Ward! That was impossible! Alan was dead! Ironwood had carried his lifeless form up several rungs of a ladder, out of that earthly hell hole a year ago and placed his body in the backseat of his Jeepster. After the molten lava consumed that damn shoggoth and all the insanity was laid to rest; he had overseen the cremation of his old friend. Life had pretty much gotten back to normal for the professor. He had returned to his projects for the NWC at Michelson Lab and was just starting to put the memory of the frightening tunnels and its bloodcurdling occupant behind him. The horrors of that time, watching his friend and colleague die in front of him rushed back in with a powerful ache of sorrow.
Ironwood shook himself free of the glue that held him to the tarmac and ran toward the JLTV. As if on cue, the man behind the wheel shifted the Tactical Vehicle into gear and drove off. “He never even saw me,” the Professor said to the morning sky. Not wasting a moment, he dashed back to his car. By the time Thomas Ironwood got the Willys Jeepster started and maneuvered into traffic, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle was nowhere in sight.
***
The hour and a half drive on US-395 North to Darwin gave Ironwood plenty of time to think. He had driven his small Jeepster around the neighborhood for a while in hopes of locating his phantom, but with no success. Professor Ironwood kept running an instant replay of the event at the gas pumps over and over in his mind. With each rerun, he became more and more certain that his eyes had played a trick on him. There was no way that Alan Ward could have survived. Also, Alan was no soldier; he was a scholar, an academic dedicated to his research. Furthermore, he had viewed his remains on a slab in the mortuary. Even if Alan had survived, he would have been knocking on his front door looking for his old friend, the Professor, not showing up a year later driving, of all things, a military vehicle. It was the glare and the heat of the morning sun that caused the confusion, he decided.
Ironwood turned right onto highway 190 East and drove the additional fifteen minutes to Darwin. The small desert community had been his home ever since he left Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts to take a position with the Naval Weapons Center as their chief physicist overseeing the construction and testing of chemical lasers. Darwin was once a mining town that during the early 20th century boasted a population of over four-thousand that now contained less than fifty within its boundaries. When the mines closed, there was very little reason to live in Darwin, for most. Nowadays the people that lived there are a small community of artists and those preferring life in the wilderness where the nearest supermarket is ninety miles away. It is a remote town, sitting high in the desert mountains near Death Valley with an excruciatingly slow internet connection, scant cell phone signal and the dubious honor of becoming one of the last places in America not to be hooked up with broadband. Ironwood enjoyed the isolation.
The small population of Darwin petitioned Verizon to install broadband, but for now, the cost outweighed the demand for the company. Thomas became the local hero when, after having DIRECTV bundled with high-speed satellite internet installed at home he placed an antenna on his rooftop and broadcasted Wi-Fi to the town using a secured router. Ironwood smiled at his clever little trick and hoped that his provider never caught on. Turning left off Main Street, he drove his modified 1950 Willys Overland Jeepster onto the roof of his house.
Parking on the roof of his house was one of Thomas Ironwood’s eccentricities. When he purchased the home, he noticed that the heavy timbers supporting the roof and the ceiling below showed traces of tread marks on its thick surface. The house was close to the edge of the street leaving no room to park in front. The roof had been cleverly engineered, in such a way, that it angled downward and cantilevered to the street. The realtor informed him that the previous owner, “used to park a lightweight truck up there.”
Ironwood carried the groceries indoors and placed the shopping bags on the kitchen counter. Amy would have normally greeted him at the door, but he had sent her on an errand, and she wouldn’t be back for several hours. The widow, Mrs. Amy Murchison, used to be the professor’s housekeeper. However, the events of the previous year had set in motion a more intimate relationship. Ironwood was a widower that had just past fifty-two years of age and Amy was two-years younger. Both had been single for a long time, and the need for bonding was strong. Thomas Ironwood was very comfortable with their association, and he believed that Amy was too.
Ironwood hung his hat on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. Even though he and Amy were now an “item,” and no longer an employer, employee connection, she still kept their home as neat as a pin. She also did not approve of his cowboy hats lying about the house and had told him, on several occasions, that they belonged in the hall closet. Ironwood smiled at the recollection. That was when he heard the noise. It came from outdoors, from his patio. It sounded like someone shifting their position in one of the lawn chairs. The clatter of an aluminum chair pulled across the flagstones. It was too soon for Amy’s return. The window over the kitchen sink was small and afforded him a limited view of the patio. He swore that was where the noise had originated. Muffled voices followed.
The Professor hurried to the master bedroom and retrieved his Smith and Wesson .38 caliber police special from his bedtable drawer. The revolver had been his father’s and was over sixty-years-old, practically a family heirloom, but well maintained. An older model, the firing pin was in the hammer. Consequently, Ironwood had it loaded with only five-rounds, with the hammer resting on an empty chamber. The arrangement would eliminate an accidental discharge in case the gun is dropped. The fifty-two-year-old was remarkably stealth leaving by his front door and around the west side of the house ending up behind the vintage custom Airstream parked at the patio’s end.
A mass of timbers that were the rafters of Ironwood’s home extended unsheathed over the patio where they rested on the rooftop of the old stainless-steel trailer. It was an enormous pergola. Through the open spaces, between the timbers, one could make out the bright blue sky; below was a patio floor flagged by blue and g
ray pavestones minus the area in the center where a large circular firepit stood.
Ironwood had quietly entered the rear door of the Airstream and crept softly along its floorboards. The interior partitions of the travel trailer had been removed years before, and bookshelves lined every wall. A steel gray desk and three chairs occupied the balance of the room. It was the Professor’s study. The side door of the Airstream faced the flagstone patio. Thomas Ironwood silently stepped through the opening and faced the intruders. The air was hot and still. He pointed the revolver at one of the two men sitting in lawn chairs. The Smith and Wesson was loaded with hollow nose ammo. At this point-blank range, he knew, if he shot one of them in the chest it would make a grapefruit-size exit hole.
***
The interlopers first became aware of the Professor’s presence when they heard the metallic sound of the hammer on the .38 ratcheting back. The tall man with the scar turned slowly and rose from his chair. He stared at the gun barrel and then looked Ironwood square in the face.
Chapter 8
- The Encounter -
Ironwood was peering at the face of Alan Ward. It was the same man he had witnessed in the military vehicle dressed in camo. The resemblance to Alan was uncanny, except Alan was a frail person and this man was powerfully built and much taller. There was also a long thin scar on the left side of his face. “You’ve got five-seconds, who are you?” he demanded.
“Gideon Ward,” answered the tall man with a scar.
“Ward? Any relation to Alan Ward?”
“He was my brother,” replied Gideon, stone-faced.
Gideon Ward showed no fear when I pointed the gun at him, Ironwood mused. He liked that. “Most people knock on my front door when they come to visit.”
