“Are you?” I replied, and the voice cackled, an ugly, mechanical sound.
I paused in the doorway, glanced up at the surveillance camera above and felt a wave of fear. No, doesn’t matter, not anymore, I told myself, and pushed open the glass doors to enter a dark, empty reception room. It wasn’t so dark that I couldn’t see my way, and taking the stairs at the other side of the room, I walked up to the second floor, reaching a short corridor facing the offices lining the front of the building. There were four doors; the glass on the fourth one along illuminated and bearing a card sign with the words: ‘Big Yellow Self Storage.’
I approached the door, knocked, and a voice said from within, “Come inside,” followed by a wracking cough.
The brass doorknob felt greasy to the touch, so I turned it with a firm grip, stepping into what was probably the messiest office I’d seen in my life. It smelled strongly of cigarettes, the kind of stink you’d get from a chain smoker, the window at the far wall only slightly ajar so the funk remained where it was. The room had two desks, one in the center with another pressed against the corner of the northeast wall. The desk facing me was covered in trash. Piles of papers, files, envelopes, soda cans and even a couple of wadded up tee-shirts. The other I couldn’t get a clear look at due to the bear of a man slouched between them.
Bear? More like a manatee, I corrected myself.
Bald, with a thick red beard growing down his ample gut, his beady eyes stared me up and down from behind smoke-tinted glasses. He wore a purple shirt, stained around the armpits, a frayed, pencil-thin black leather tie hanging loosely around his collar. He squinted and said, in a strong New Yorker accent, “What the fuck is wrong with your face?”
Another import from the Big Apple, like Frank Nardi and myself. I ignored the quip and said, “Straub? Have you got my key?”
He gave me an ugly, humorless smile, revealing teeth brown with decay. “Your key?” He coughed, a thick, phlegmy sound. “You mean, the key that isn’t yours, the key you want to buy off of me?”
I tilted my head, frowned. “If that’s the way you want to play it, yeah. The key you’re willing to give me for a thousand bucks.”
“Sure, sure, fella,” he said, still grinning, and sat forward in his seat. “The compound on East Armitage Street, the ten-by-fifteen unit. What’s in it for you?”
His grin grew wider, and I saw some gold tucked between the brown. “My business, not yours,” I replied, and began to feel an uncomfortable sweat form at the back of my neck.
“Well the thing about that, fella, is I know who rents that locker, and think he’d be very interested in knowing about your attempts to get inside. How about—”
“You silly fat fuck,” I said, pulled the silenced Beretta from my jacket, and fired two shots into his gut. The subdued ‘pops’ rang loudly in the small room, two red spots blossomed on Straub’s belly, and he moaned, slumping forward face down into the junk atop his desk.
I looked to him, stared at the gun in my hand, and said, “What?”
He was asking for it, the voice said, and guffawed.
“You idiot,” I said and hissed. “How the hell am I going to find the key in all this shit?”
Straub flinched, a final death throe, making me jump as a result. I heard a tinkling as something dropped from his hand to the carpet.
With quick steps, I moved around the desk and examined the floor. Lying inches beneath a limp, chubby hand, I saw a green plastic key tag with keys attached.
Voila, the voice said.
I shook my head and leant down.
- - -
Twenty minutes later, having headed toward East Town straight after the incident with Straub, I was walking toward the ‘Big Yellow Self Storage’ compound. The voice had been right of course, he had deserved it, and it was a loose end tied nicely as I put an end to everything, tonight.
The compound was surrounded by wire fences, with the shadowy rows of gray concrete storage units lined up beyond. I approached the gate and eyed it up with a thought to climbing over. I expected the voice to say something sarcastic, but it remained silent, probably sated by the earlier murder.
Ten foot high, the chained and padlocked handles halfway up would supply adequate footing … I looked around, braced myself, then ran for the fence. A jump and a clamber later and I was at the top, having climbed it less gracefully that I would have in my younger years. I paused a moment, got a view of woods beyond the compound, then slid over, landing loudly on my sneakers on the other side. I froze in my crouch, startled-cat style, and looked around the darkened compound, listening for any sounds.
The place appeared unguarded, no men, no dogs … this was sleepy Arkham, after all, where nothing untoward ever happened.
I sniggered and headed across the asphalt toward the second unit row along. I hoped, because the tag attached to the keys was labeled ‘2M,’ that my unit stood there. I soon found I was wrong, counting the ‘2A’ to ‘2J’ sprayed above the units’ red shutters. Turning and crossing to the other side, I found the third unit from the end was the one I required.
The shutter before me unlocked from the bottom, but it also had a keypad halfway up the right side. I approached that first and pulled the keys from my jacket pocket. The flipside of the tag bore the numbers ‘2576,’ which I hoped was the correct pass code. The owner of this locker no doubt paid extra for security, meaning if the alarm went off, other alarms would go off at Arkham’s downtown precinct. I keyed the number into the metal pad, pressed enter, and … nothing happened.
“Huh,” I said, and crossed some fingers as I leant down on my knees to unlock the shutter. All three keys on the key tag were duplicates, so there was no problem there, and I turned one in the lock and hefted up the shutter with a grunt.
No alarms, or at least, none here, so I continued pushing the shutter up till it caught at the top latch. Perspiring a little, more from anticipation than exertion, I took a few steps back to examine the contents.
Darkness, and boxes, plain old cardboard boxes. I folded my arms and stared into that small space, wanting to feel something. I didn’t.
“Shoulda, woulda, coulda,” I said, and stepping inside, approached one of the stacks and patted the cardboard. I dug my fingers into the box, then used both hands to remove a good chunk. I felt inside, my fingers touching papers. Combustible, good, I thought, and patting my pants pocket, found my lighter. Next I pulled out some wads of paper, turned them into kindling, and used it to set alight the bases of the boxes. When I was sure of a hearty blaze, the yellow flames licking up the sides of the cardboard and finding more fuel within, I turned and left the locker.
“You, freeze where you are!” The voice froze me in my tracks, as did the beam of light shining in my face.
Security? What did it matter? I turned my head slowly and saw, from the direction I’d come from originally, two dark silhouettes pointing flashlights.
A cloud of sharp-smelling smoke engulfed me, and a second later I had my Beretta out, firing over the interlopers’ heads.
I turned tail and ran, their returned fire going over my head as I ducked down the side of the units.
“Shit,” I said, and stared at the gun in my hand. A gunfight wasn’t what I wanted. Who are those guys? I could hazard a guess: Nardi’s partners. Another two shots cracked past the edge of the units, and hoping the smoke would deter them, I ran for the fence and the woods beyond.
I tucked my Beretta back into its holster as I ran, leaped as I neared the fence and had it halfway scaled in an instant, clambering the rest of the way but losing my balance at the top, falling sideways and hitting the earth on the other side with a ‘grunt.’ It proved to be my lucky break, as flashlight beams wavered over my prone form before moving off to my right. When I moved and found my body a mass of aches I didn’t feel too lucky, however, and crawling along the ground, I headed toward the woods, grasping weeds and lumps of soil as I made my undignified way to safety. The earthy smell was strong, but not un
bearable, and it ridded me of the tang of burning matter from back at the compound.
Shouts issued behind me, and I stopped my snail’s-pace movement to shuffle around and see if my attackers were in pursuit. Nada; there was no one coming over or around the fence, and I guessed they were loudly trying to deal with the fire. I crawled onward, faster this time, nearing the twisted, gnarled forms of trees and the dark shadows of the woods. I climbed to my knees, entered the woods in a crouch and found the earthy smell replaced by mold and the stink of dank, rotten undergrowth. I passed a tree and my elbow pressed against something soft and yielding, my sneakers finding more of the same underfoot.
“Damn place is rotting around me,” I said, and laughter, deep and monotone, issued from the darkness to my right.
I pulled my gun and aimed it in that direction.
“Rotting around you, just like you’re rotten now,” the voice said, and a throbbing shape detached itself from the shadows.
I shuddered, backing away in horror from the twisting black mass that approached me.
“You,” I said, and heard the sounds of wriggling snakes, crawling cockroaches, all the other ugly unclean noises that could make a man’s gorge rise. It smelled like brimstone and lilacs.
The nebulous shape transformed, and I felt my body go into convulsions. Frozen in place however, I was forced to watch, as the crippling pain wracked through my every muscle and artery.
I saw a bloated black thing with bat wings, with three red eyes like searchlights that burned through to my very soul. Then it was a black man, an ebony skinned giant with hoofed feet and a grinning face. A haughty-faced, Egyptian pharaoh followed, wearing a brightly colored robe, then it grew into a tall, silver skinned, faceless man dressed in a purple velvet pimp suit.
I collapsed, soaked in sweat and in such pain I felt my body had been turned inside out.
With difficulty, I raised my head, seeing through tear-filled eyes a lanky, Middle Eastern man dressed in a three-piece charcoal suit.
“Monster,” I said, and spat a blood filled blob of bile at his feet.
The man-thing laughed, a mellow, gentle sound, and went to its knees.
“I have many names, The Crawling Chaos, The Universal Cancer … But what’s in a name? Only something your species utilizes in a vain attempt to control reality.”
This man, this thing, had been there with Nardi, on the night it all changed for the worse, and here it was again, offering me its hand.
“I’m here to check up on you,” it said. “Seems you’re on the track for revenge.”
Ignoring the hand, I pulled myself unsteadily to my feet, suffering a dizzy spell that turned my vision black. When I opened my eyes again, I was face to face with a pale, spongy-faced giant, its naked form knelt on its haunches and its eyes hollow, bloody sockets.
“I’ll be watching,” it said in a child’s voice, then evaporated into black oily smoke that drifted up toward the sky in snaking tendrils.
My knees turned to jelly, forcing me to grab a nearby tree for support. A trilling sound appeared somewhere nearby, and it took a few moments before I realized it was my cellphone, fallen from my jacket during my collapse. It was right beside my gun.
“I can’t forget you,” I said, and knelt to pick both up. I put the gun in my jacket and pressed the ‘Answer’ icon on the phone’s screen.
“He’s here, you owe me a hundred bucks,” a woman’s voice said, then she hung up.
An image appeared in my head of a petite twenty-something blonde with the aged look of a crack addict. One of two people living in Nardi’s apartment building I’d asked to watch for him, I’d pay her when I got my unfinished business finished.
Deciding to take a circuitous route around the edges of the compound, as I made my way back through the woods I wondered if my car was still parked on Nardi’s street, or impounded.
Lady Luck, don’t fail me now.
- - -
She didn’t. Half an hour after my encounter in the woods, I was trailing Nardi’s car through the streets of Arkham until he parked up outside Mifflin’s Restaurant. Good old Nardi, so predictable, I thought as I watched from across the street. The glass of the restaurant was steamed, but not so much I couldn’t see Nardi’s large form, hunched over a plate as he shoveled food into his mouth.
My stomach growled, my mouth salivating as I watched him. I allowed those old urges to pass, and waited, watching the man finish his meal, leave his money on the table for old Mifflin, and then exit the restaurant. He turned toward his car, and I went to fasten my seatbelt. Safety first, I thought, and snickered at my private joke.
Nardi paused, stuffed his hand into his jacket, and removed something I realized was a cellphone as he put it to his ear.
He stood there speaking into it while I sat tapping my fingers on the steering wheel. After a few minutes of talking he put the cellphone back into his jacket before turning around and heading away from his car.
“Where you going, pal?” I asked myself. Realizing that tailing him by car wasn’t a good option, I pulled the keys from the ignition, climbed out and crossed the street to follow him.
He walked slowly, taking his sweet time as he strolled along West Main Street. Being no stranger to tracking a man, I kept my distance as Nardi kept his even pace. He stopped at the curb, turned, and I quickly ducked behind a parked car, watching from it as he crossed the street to head around the corner down South Garrison Street.
With him out of sight I rushed across the street, slowing my footsteps as I reached the corner.
Nardi was gone, and after walking a few more steps I stopped and looked around, puzzled.
Hurried footsteps from the darkness of an alley behind me were followed by a strong grip on my collar. Dragged around, I found myself pushed into the alley, stumbling as I tried to regain my footing. I fell completely when a blow struck the back of my head. The top of my spine screamed in agony, my knees following suit as they hit the cobbles.
I went for my gun, pausing halfway to it as I heard the telltale sound of a trigger clicking back
“Raise your hands, buddy, real slow,” Nardi said.
I followed his instructions, and looked up as he continued, “You burned up my old partner’s belongings, you—”
I grinned and said, “I burned my own stuff, actually.”
The look on his face was priceless.
“Tony, Tony Balnco? How the hell?” he exclaimed, and lowered his pistol, just an inch.
Dying time, the voice whispered, and my arm shot out, grabbed Nardi’s wrist and twisted it cruelly. The gun fell, clattering to the floor, Nardi’s face filled with surprise and pain as without my own volition, I used my free hand to pull the Beretta from my jacket.
“NO!” I shouted, and fought my finger as it pulled on the trigger. I released my hold on Nardi’s wrist, trying to use both my hands to stop shooting him.
The voice said, Spoilsport, and I was in control again.
While this happened, Nardi had retrieved his gun, but he wasn’t pointing it at me. He just stood there, staring down with a slack jawed expression.
“How?” he asked, and the word fell into an uncomfortable, tense silence.
“Beats me, buddy,” I replied after a few more moments. “I guess when something as big and nasty as that thing in the museum kills you, death is something you can shrug off.”
Nardi stared at me for some seconds, looked down a little longer in apparent reflection, then returned his gaze to me.
“Someone did a real job on your face, Tony,” he said, and I saw pity in his expression, mingled with little disgust.
I rose to my feet while I spoke, “Coming back from the dead, and … the way I died, doesn’t exactly leave a man whole.”
I touched my face, felt the place where my nose had rotted off
“Balnco … Tony … man, I’m sorry about that case, sending you there. I had no idea …”
“No idea?” I yelled, and Nardi flinched. I continued
on the offensive. “Meddling in shit we had no right getting involved in, and I’m the result!”
Having said what I’d needed to, I aimed my Beretta at his head.
Nardi stared down the barrel, and his eyes went wide.
“Goodbye,” I said, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Quick as a flash, Nardi raised his gun. Two thunderous roars later, and I was down on the floor, a numbness filling my chest where agony should have been.
Nardi stood over me, then crouched down, cupping my head in his hand.
The numbness was spreading, the voice was laughing, but it was growing distant by the second.
“Heh,” I said, and coughed up something wet. “This time … have me cremated … or I’ll come after you … again.”
Nardi began speaking, but the sound was muffled, a world away.
As my vision dimmed, I wondered at the luck that saved his life. Dud bullet? Miscounted the rounds?
Whatever. I looked at the fading image of my former friend, and said, “Closure.”
WITCH FIRE
Scott T. Goudsward
“Can you believe this shit?” Jackson asked. Suarez stood next to him, looking down into the crater, the edges of the hole still glowing red with heat. “This is messed up.” Jackson went to the squad car and took out the mag light and played it across the bottom of the pit. It was perfectly round, like something scooped out that section of road. There was an old ceramic pipe missing about two feet that had also been obliterated in the “blast,” cut perfectly smooth.
“Call it in, Eddie,” Jackson said. Officer Tim Jackson walked back to the cruiser, parked the car across the road, blocking both lanes and turned on the lights. He watched his partner Eddie Suarez speaking into his radio. Jackson got out and walked around the crater and dropped flares on the road.
He thought about going into the hole for a moment. There was no telling what was leaking out of the old pipe, if anything. On both sides of the street, lights snapped on in windows. In the distance he heard the soft wail of police cruisers. He walked back to his partner and nodded at the hole.
Arkham Detective Agency: A Lovecraftian-Noir Tribute to C. J. Henderson Page 16
