by Mike Mignola
“Hello,” he said, not expecting any notice of his greeting, for that was the way of the ghosts in his home.
But her eyes focused upon him, and he felt a sudden jolt of surprise as he realized she had heard him.
She was an older woman, dressed in what appeared to be a flowing blue nightgown. There was a nasty laceration on the side of her head, an ectoplasmic bleed draining out into the air around her.
Bentley stared into her eyes and felt her looking back at him.
“Are you lost?” he asked her, thinking that maybe she had lost her way and needed to be shown the places in the sprawling house that she could go.
She continued to stare at him, waiting.
“Do you need something?” he asked her, and in her gaze he swore he found that she did. “Do you need something … of me?”
Bentley wasn’t sure why he did it, but he found himself rising to his feet and walking toward the ghost of the woman. His eyes were drawn to the leaking wound on the side of her head. He lifted a hand up toward it, allowing the ghostly drainage to waft around it.
There was a sudden tug upon his fingers, an unknown current that pulled his hand toward the woman’s head and into her ghostly skull.
And that was when he saw it. Her life, as well as her death.
Bentley stood transfixed as images of the woman’s existence flashed before his mind’s eye, staccato flashes of everything that made her who she was, leading up to the final, horrific moment when …
She had been murdered. Her skull bashed in, in some violent act. The vision was blurry, and he couldn’t quite make it out, or the person responsible, but he saw enough to know it was murder.
And he knew deep down in his gut that whoever was responsible had not yet been brought to justice.
Bentley pulled his hand back from within the apparition’s ghostly skull, his fingers numb as if he’d placed them in icy water. He stared at the woman, who stared back intensely, beckoning.
Compelling him to act.
But how?
“They’re always pretty insistent.”
A strange, croaking voice suddenly spoke from so close, it practically came from inside Bentley’s skull. The young man nearly leapt from his skin.
“Who’s there?” he demanded, clutching his frozen hand to his chest as he looked about the burned-out room for signs of the intruder. “Show yourself!”
There came a fluttering of wings, and from out of a patch of deep darkness flew a large, black bird: a raven, to be more specific.
Bentley watched the animal as it touched down on a section of charred mantel across from him.
“Happy?” it asked, tilting its head and fixing him in one of its dark, copper-colored eyes.
Bentley looked around again, expecting to find a person.
“There’s no one else here besides you and me … well, and that poor soul standing beside you,” the bird informed him.
Bentley looked from the raven to the ghostly woman.
“You can see her?”
“Clear as day,” the bird answered. “The name’s Roderick, by the way, and now that it’s time, I’ve been sent to offer you some guidance.”
“It’s time?” Bentley asked. “What do you mean, it’s time?”
“It’s time for you to pay up,” Roderick said. “It’s time for you to do the job that’s been assigned to you.”
“Job? I don’t know of any job?”
“Seriously?” The bird tilted his head from left to right. “You didn’t think that after what your folks and that mad scientist pulled a few years back there wouldn’t be repercussions?”
“Repercussions?” Bentley repeated. “My parents perished in that incident, and Professor Romulus … he went missing, as if he fell off the face of the planet.”
“And you thought you were going to get off scot-free?” Roderick asked, leaning forward from the mantel.
“I didn’t…”
“But you did,” the raven corrected. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”
Bentley stared. “I…” he began, then stopped, not having a clue as to where this bizarre discussion was going.
“You’re alive because of what my boss saw in you,” Roderick said.
“Your boss?”
“That’s right,” the bird said, starting to waddle up and down the blackened wood mantel. “Normally he would have just taken everybody in the room, there one minute, gone the next, but he saw potential in you … something that he could use to make up for what your parents had done.”
“Your boss,” Bentley began. “Who…?”
“Seriously, kid?” Roderick asked. “C’mon, nobody is that dumb.”
The bird made a strange sound that might have been a laugh.
“The boss thinks it’s time for you to pay the piper,” Roderick continued, “and he sent me along to help guide you down the proper path.”
Bentley finally understood about whom the bird was talking—his boss—and was terrified. He’d seen the faces of the entity that his parents and Romulus had attempted to trap. One was that of a beautiful little girl, and the other a ragged thing of rage and nightmare.
Bentley had known them both, and had always suspected that it had left a little bit of itself behind when it had embraced him.
“The proper path,” he said. “I have no idea what that even means.”
“You’ve been given a gift,” Roderick said, “the ability to see those who have left their physical bodies behind in death. But with that gift comes a job.”
Bentley found himself staring at the ghostly old woman, realizing that she was there for a very specific reason.
She was indeed there for him, and for what he could do for her.
“Tell me about this job,” he said, a feeling of dread gripping his heart. “Tell me what Death wants me to do.”
“Some of those who have died were taken before it was their time,” Roderick said. “Lives snuffed out by others who do not respect the sanctity of life.” The raven fluttered his wings, puffing up his ebony feathers. “It will be your purpose … your job, to avenge those who have had their lives so brutally torn away.”
“How?” Bentley asked.
“They’ll show you what they remember,” the bird explained. “The act that stole away their precious lives … and you will be as Death, and reap payment from those responsible … or something like that.”
“I will be Death?” Bentley asked, incredulously.
The bird nodded. “But not just any Death. You won’t be gentle, or loving, or quiet. You will be the Death that they deserve.”
“A murderer’s Death,” Bentley said, feeling something totally unnatural awaken in the pit of his soul.
“A grim Death,” Roderick said, and began to squawk noisily, loud enough to wake the dead.
Chapter Twenty-one
Gwendolyn had been thinking quite a bit about the sickly young man with the pale skin and nervous disposition.
Why, she hadn’t a clue. There was just something about Bentley Hawthorne that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
Was she attracted to him? Was that it? She couldn’t say. It wasn’t as simple as like or dislike … there was just something unnamable that drew her to him.
She’d been practicing writing her married name—if she and Bentley ever managed to somehow, miraculously come together—in one of her notepads, Gwendolyn Anne Hawthorne, when she first heard the sound.
Gwendolyn set her pen down and listened.
Her father was out at the club, attending one of his frequent work dinners, and not wanting to be bothered, she had sent the help home for the evening.
It was supposed to be a quiet night of reflection on why she was so attracted to somebody who obviously wasn’t attracted to her—in fact, she wasn’t even sure if Bentley liked girls. She wasn’t sure if he liked anybody, or anything—except for his butler. It was obvious that the two of them were close.
But it seemed that a quiet night wasn’t in the
cards.
There was somebody moving around downstairs, there was no doubt in her mind, and she quickly set her notepad and pen down on her bed and kicked off her shoes so she could move silently across the room.
Gwendolyn carefully opened her door and stuck her head out into the hall to listen. There was most definitely somebody, or a group of somebodies, moving around on the first floor below.
Not hesitating for an instant, she darted from her room and silently padded down the corridor to her father’s. Turning the knob, she quickly entered the room and went right to the closet. Gwendolyn knew where her father, an avid hunter for as long as she could recall, kept his favorite gun, as well as its ammunition. Grabbing the hunting rifle from the wall rack in the walk-in closet, she quickly rummaged for bullets. She listened for sounds of the intruders coming closer as she loaded the gun. There was a part of her that wanted to lock the door of her father’s bedroom and hide herself away, but there was another part—the part her father often said he associated with her deceased mother—that was infuriated by someone daring to enter her home uninvited. Anyone rude enough to do such a thing deserved what they got.
With a surge of anger, she walked toward the door, rifle in hand. Silently she cursed her father for not being home, and at the same time thanked him for the early morning pheasant-hunting sessions during which he’d taught her how to use a gun.
Gwendolyn stepped out into the dark hallway, heading for the stairs, but stopped with a gasp as she saw the figure ascending. She raised her gun. “I’d stop right there, if I were you,” she warned.
The figure continued to slowly ascend, gradually stepping into a patch of moonlight streaming in from the high windows in the foyer.
“I’m warning you,” she yelled, stepping forward for a closer shot and aiming down the length of the barrel at her target.
The figure entered the moonlight, and she felt her heart turn to ice.
“Christ on a bicycle,” she mumbled, not believing her eyes.
The clown was holding a knife and smiling as he continued to climb. Never a fan of clowns to begin with, she thought he was one of the most terrifying she had ever seen, with bright red hair sticking up from either side of his bald white head, enormous red-encircled lips, and huge teeth that would have given Seabiscuit a run for his money.
And he was almost at the top of the stairs.
“You thought you were so pretty,” the clown said, in a strange, monotone voice. “You were trying to show me how pretty you were, weren’t you? Rubbing my face in the fact that you had a cute boyfriend … Well, I had a cute boyfriend, too.”
Gwendolyn backed up, still aiming the gun, but the clown’s words confused her. He was speaking as though they’d met before, and nothing could have been further from the truth.
“Don’t come any closer,” she warned the clown.
A creak from the other end of the corridor caused her to take her gaze from the approaching nightmare.
Coming from her room was another nightmare: another clown, only much smaller—a dwarf.
“Not so pretty now that you’re scared,” said the small clown, in that same weird monotone. He was holding what looked like a meat cleaver as he waddled down the corridor from her room.
Gwendolyn didn’t know whom to aim at first, her brain in a total panic over the nightmare she was facing.
“Where’s your boyfriend now?” asked the dwarf clown as he switched the cleaver from one white-gloved hand to the other.
“Thought he’d be here with you,” finished the other clown, who had reached the top of the stairs. “No matter. We’ll wait here after I’ve finished with you so we don’t miss him.”
The clown at the top of the stairs lunged without warning, and she aimed the best that she could at the moving target, firing a shot but missing the multicolored nightmare coming at her.
The dwarf charged silently, and she was able to fire another shot, striking the tiny figure in the leg and causing him to collapse to the hallway floor. The other clown struck her head-on as she attempted to bring her rifle around again. The grinning attacker pushed her back against the hallway wall with incredible force, causing her to drop the rifle.
The clown smiled, and she found herself looking into his vague, glassy eyes as he brought the knife up to show her.
“I’m gonna carve that pretty face off your skull,” he said, as she struggled to be free of his clutches, finally slamming her knee up between the clown’s legs and connecting with his family jewels.
The clown didn’t even seem to feel it. He leaned in closer, bringing the knife blade up toward her cheek.
There was no mistaking the sound of the front door slamming open, and she thought for sure it was her father, returned home to save her.
The clown paused to look toward the noise, and she made her move, pushing her attacker away with all her might and running toward the banister.
“A little help up here!” Gwendolyn screamed, peering down into the foyer, desperate for a friendly face.
The face she saw looked anything but friendly.
It was a skull.
What was that about a quiet evening?
* * *
Bentley hoped he wasn’t too late.
Pym had stopped the car in a patch of shadow not far from the Marks estate so they wouldn’t be seen. That would be all they needed, for Gwendolyn to see Bentley wearing the guise of Grim Death. Her reporter’s hunger for news would be voracious.
“Be careful, sir!” Pym had said as Grim Death had leapt from the car and run down the long driveway toward the darkened house.
He ran past a beat-up old truck hidden in the shadow alongside the mansion. That wasn’t good—the chances of the attackers being inside the home seemed even more certain.
Grim Death headed directly for the front door; something inside him, gnawing in his gut like a hungry weasel, told him that subtlety and stealth would be out of the question. Gwendolyn would be in need of help immediately.
Guns in hand, he reached the door, pulling back his leg and delivering a tremendous kick to the center of the double doors. They flew open, and he heard a familiar voice cry out, “A little help up here!”
He looked up to the second floor to see the young woman staring down at him, her expression going from one of supreme relief to one of complete horror.
He was going to reassure her, to tell her that everything was going to be all right, but a clown wielding a butcher knife appeared from behind her and instead he was forced to violence.
The clown was going to cut Gwendolyn’s throat, and even though there was a chance that she might be hit, Grim Death had no choice but to act. He aimed his Colt and fired at the clown, striking the white-faced nightmare in the hand that held the knife in an explosion of crimson.
Grim Death was already on the move, running up the stairs, ready to fire again if necessary. What he found shocked him, stopped him at the top of the stairs.
“Miss Marks, don’t!” he warned her.
Gwendolyn had picked up a rifle from somewhere and was aiming at the clown who clutched his bloody hand as he knelt upon the floor. Grim Death also noticed that there was another, smaller clown rocking to and fro in pain as a puddle of blood formed on the expensive carpet beneath him.
Suddenly ignoring the clowns, Gwendolyn took aim at him.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.
He lowered his pistol to put her at ease, hoping that she wouldn’t take it as an invitation to shoot.
“I’m a friend,” he said. “I’ve come to help.”
“You look about as much of a friend as these two,” she said, moving the barrel of the hunting rifle down to the clown with the damaged hand, and then at the dwarf, before pointing it back at him.
“If I was with them, would I have shot my own teammate?” he asked, hoping that she would see he meant her no harm.
“I should finish them both off,” she said with a snarl, and he watched as tears began to glisten on
her flushed cheeks.
“I wouldn’t do that.” He stepped closer, but stopped as she again aimed the rifle at his chest.
“That’s close enough,” she said. “And why shouldn’t I shoot them both dead? They came into my house and tried to hurt me.”
“Because I don’t believe they know what they’re doing,” he said. “I believe that they’re being controlled by some strange, unknown force.”
He watched her face twist up in confusion.
“What are you saying?” Gwendolyn asked. “That they’re not in their right minds?”
“Something like that,” Grim Death said.
And as if on cue, the clown at her feet sprang up with a scream, and still clutching his bloody hand to his chest, pushed her out of the way and ran to his partner.
Gwendolyn fell back, but still held on to her gun, raising it up to aim and fire. Grim Death would not see an innocent life taken; he ran across the hallway and pushed the barrel down so she fired into the floor.
“What the heck!” Gwendolyn bellowed angrily.
The larger clown picked up the smaller like a mother cradling her child, and ran toward the railing, jumping over the side.
“Holy crap, they’ve killed themselves,” Gwendolyn said as she and Grim Death rushed to the railing.
The clowns had landed awkwardly, but had survived the fall, both now running and limping grotesquely, leaving a dark crimson trail of blood as they made their way toward the open doors to escape.
“They’re getting away,” Gwendolyn yelled.
“They are no longer a concern,” Grim Death said. “The control over them has been broken.”
He felt the hard barrel of the rifle poke him in the back.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t hold you for the police,” she said.
Grim Death slowly turned. The gun remained pointed at his heart.
“Because there is no time for that,” he said. “A ghost’s cries for justice must be answered.”
She looked at him hard, and so that she did not see too much he lowered the brim of his hat.
“The innocent dead must be avenged.”
“Who the heck are you?” Gwendolyn asked, lowering the rifle, attempting to move closer to him.
