by Mike Mignola
The gunshot came from close by, and Pym gasped aloud, imagining his boy—Bentley Hawthorne—lying dead upon a bed of leaves in the thick, dark wood.
He started to run, unsure of exactly where he was going, but knowing he needed to find the boy. The shot had sounded close, so he hoped that he was running in the right direction.
“Bentley!” he cried out as he ran. “Bentley, where are you?”
The silence of the forest was deafening, and he felt the sense of panic and desperation growing in his gut the longer the quiet went on.
“Bentley!”
Pym almost fell headfirst over a small ridge, the toe of his dress shoe catching upon a thick root that had pushed its way up from beneath a patch of olive-green moss. He managed to halt his fall, grabbing hold of the rough bark of a tree, and saw his charge below the ridge.
“Bentley,” he cried out again, maneuvering through the undergrowth and carefully going over the ridge to the forest floor below.
Bentley lay upon the ground, perfectly still, gun in hand.
Pym’s mind was afire with the possibilities of the situation. Perhaps he was still alive, the shot not being fatal.
Or maybe the butler was indeed too late.
There was blood on the leaves nearby, but it took a moment for the knowledge to register that Bentley was not alone.
The young man lay on the ground beside the body of a large buck, its impressive rack of antlers resembling the twisted branches of an ancient tree.
Bentley lay perfectly still beside the body of the dead animal. It appeared to have been shot twice, once in the side and once in the center of its head.
“I didn’t think I could do it,” Bentley said, lying beside the corpse of the animal, looking up into the gray October sky.
“Sir?”
“Kill it,” Bentley said. “I didn’t think I could kill anything, but I was wrong.”
“It appears to have been shot twice,” Pym said, his eyes going to the two wounds. “But I heard only one shot.”
“He’d been shot by a hunter,” Bentley said, still looking up at the sky. “It was a bad shot, nicked a lung. The poor thing was suffering, dying slowly.”
“How did you know…?”
“This was my first test,” Bentley said. “To see if I could pull the trigger … to see if I could follow orders.”
“Somebody ordered you to do this?” Pym asked.
Bentley sat up, looking at the gun in his hand.
“This was all about mercy,” Bentley told him. “To end a living thing’s suffering. I wonder if the others will be as easy.”
“Others?” Pym asked, feeling an icy sensation wriggle down the length of his spine.
Bentley looked at him, gun still in hand.
“Those will be different,” he said, getting up from the ground beside the buck and starting to walk away from Pym, toward home.
“They will be about vengeance.”
Chapter Twenty-five
The blade was incredibly sharp, the point easily passing through the material of Bentley’s trench coat, his shirt, his undershirt, and into the flesh beneath.
Bentley wanted to cry out, but the siren refused to let him, her wailing song holding him tightly and making him suffer. That was what it was all about for the sad creature now: the suffering.
She wanted the world, and everybody in it, to suffer as she had.
Through the eyeholes in his mask he was able to look into the slack face of Doctor Nocturne. Briefly, in between the pulsing waves of excruciating pain that he felt screaming through his upper body, Bentley had to wonder how long the man had been under the sea siren’s control. Did he even know what had been lost to him? Was he even aware that he, and probably a good number of the circus performers, were under the creature’s thrall?
The Doctor pulled the knife back, the blade coming free of the wound with a soft sucking sound. Bentley knew what was coming next. The following thrust would be closer to his heart, and that would be when he would actually begin to die. He watched, still frozen in place as the song of the siren wafted over him. It was like being encased in ice, everything coldly numb and rigid. The Doctor’s movements were stiff, halting; Bentley could practically see the strings of the monstrous marionette taut in the air above the older, turban-wearing man as he was manipulated by the siren.
The Doctor shuffled a little bit closer and drew his arm back, preparing for his next, likely fatal, thrust.
Bentley could feel the siren’s pleasure in this, her enjoyment in the fact that he knew that his death was only moments away. The surface world had made her cruel, and he wondered, if she had never come above and intermingled with humanity, would she still have transformed into a monster?
The blade was moving now, slicing through the air as easily as it had passed through his clothes and the soft flesh beneath. Bentley became hyperactively aware of everything at that moment, the sights, smells, and sounds of the circus exhibit; he would have sworn that he could hear the knife as it cut the air on course to his rapidly beating heart. He tried to fight the siren’s hold, to ignore the strangely beautiful sound that held him tightly in place, but it was to no avail. The song of the siren was deadly to the human ear, and he doubted that there was anything human that could overcome it.
Anything human—that was the key.
Bentley felt a stirring, and at first did not recognize it, believing it to be yet another wave of emotions and feelings that his body was going through as it prepared to be murdered.
But then he remembered.
It was the same feeling from all those years ago, when he had stood within the solarium, its air choked with smoke, the ashes of his parents on the floor. It was the same feeling he’d had when she … when it had come to him, and held him in its arms, and he became more than just a sick little boy.
Death had chosen him. Death had made him something more than he had been before. Death had made him one of its messengers.
Death had brought him here.
Nothing human could overcome the wail of the siren’s song.
But Bentley hadn’t really been human for quite some time.
He had Death inside him, and not just figuratively. Bentley believed that he actually had a piece of the force that was called Death as part of his makeup. It sat inside him, mostly quiet, but when it was aroused, during moments such as this, it was a force to be reckoned with, and quite terrifying.
Bentley felt it stir, transforming from an old dog sitting comfortably curled up by the warmth of the fire to a wild creature waiting to pounce.
Ready to feed.
He could practically hear it now, in a voice like the softest crushed velvet, whispering in his ear, This is where I come in.
Nothing human.
He felt like an observer in his own body, looking out through the holes of the skull mask as something else took control.
Bentley Hawthorne was temporarily pushed aside, and something—Grim Death, for lack of any better name—took control.
The knife blade was still on the way, coming straight toward his heart. Grim Death observed this, and decided that this was something that would not occur. It heard the siren’s song, and wrinkled up the face behind the mask in distaste, and shrugged off its preternatural influence, returning control to its host’s limbs.
Able to move his arms again, Grim Death glanced down at the Doctor’s foot and pulled the trigger once on the Colt .45. The toe of the boot exploded in a shower of bone, leather, and blood, and the man pitched sideways with a grunt, the blade of the knife suddenly off course.
The siren’s song was suddenly interrupted, changing into something that sounded an awful lot like a guttural cry of pain.
Grim Death wondered then if the pain of what had happened to the Doctor’s foot had somehow made its way back to the sea creature. He certainly hoped so—a taste of her own medicine, so to speak.
The song began again, louder and stronger, and the Doctor flailed as he attempted to mai
ntain some sort of balance. He dropped heavily down to one knee, but managed to hold on to his knife.
Grim Death was tempted to take the man, to put a bullet into his face and end his life, but that wouldn’t be right. The Doctor was in some ways an innocent, under the control of a powerful force that he could not fight. The fact that he had been responsible for bringing this foul thing into the circus family shed some shadow of guilt over him, but that was neither here nor there at the moment.
Deciding that he would not kill him, Grim Death lashed out with the barrel of one of his pistols, slapping the older man across the face and knocking the turban from atop his head. The Doctor went down in a twitching heap as the siren attempted to regain control.
Grim Death watched the creature in her tank, stepping toward her watery home and clutching the pistols in each hand. She saw him approaching and increased the intensity of her song, the water swirling from her furious activity, but he just shook his head as he stood before the glass.
“It is over,” Grim Death said, lifting one of the guns to fire into the glass.
There was suddenly noise from behind him, and he turned to catch a glimpse of a wave of humanity: all the workers of the circus within reach of her wails, now under her control, surging toward him.
Over? Grim Death pondered as the ocean of flesh landed upon him, driving him down to the ground in its writhing and violent intensity.
Not quite yet.
Chapter Twenty-six
BEFORE:
Even though his father had designed and owned a business that manufactured all manner of weaponry, Bentley had never even held a gun.
Until of late.
“So, how did it feel?” Roderick asked from his perch atop a dusty crate.
Bentley stood, aiming down the barrel of the pistol at the makeshift targets he’d set up on the floor of the deserted factory. He breathed in, and then slowly—calmly—exhaled and pulled the trigger. The shot went a little wide, missing the target by a few inches.
“Damn it,” he hissed beneath his breath.
“Do you think you can do it?” The bird continued with his line of questioning.
Bentley aimed again and fired another shot, this time hitting his target.
“Do I think I can do what?” Bentley asked, turning to address the bird. “Do I think I can shoot someone if I have to?”
“Well?” the bird asked with an odd cock of his head.
“If that’s what’s expected of me I guess I really don’t have much of a choice, do I?” Bentley said as he turned back to the targets.
“They won’t be standing still, y’know,” Roderick said, “or even made of wood.”
“I’m aware of that.” He aimed again.
“There could even be some attempts to fight back,” the bird went on, “maybe even some crying and begging.”
Bentley fired off a shot, followed by another. He could still feel the cold presence of his father’s spirit inside him, the man’s knowledge of weapons and marksmanship somehow left behind for him to utilize.
“Can you handle that?” Roderick asked.
“Again, what choice do I have?”
“We’ve all got choices, kid,” the raven answered. “Some just garner better results than others.”
“I can imagine.” Bentley fired three more shots, hitting his targets every time, a little voice inside his head thanking his father for his skills.
“People don’t need to murder, y’see, that’s a choice,” Roderick squawked. “They could live out their lives, all well and good, and never have to hear from the likes of you.”
Bentley ejected the empty clip from the gun and fished another from his pocket.
“But some choose to take a life that’s not theirs to take … to take a life that has not lived out its full potential. And that just pisses off the boss.”
“And that’s where I come in,” Bentley said, dropping the gun to his side.
“And that’s your choice,” the raven said with a cock of his head.
“But is it really?”
“Well,” Roderick said, taking flight and landing upon a metal railing above where Bentley practiced his marksmanship. “Let’s look at this. The boss picked you.”
“The boss chose me only because of what my parents tried to do.”
“True,” Roderick said. “But I think he likes you.”
Bentley remembered the shrieking horror inside the glass cabinet.
“I’m sure he does.”
“Look at what he’s done for you,” Roderick continued. “He doesn’t do that kinda stuff for everybody.”
“But now he wants me to murder for him.”
“Kill for him,” the bird quickly corrected. “There’s a difference. These are people who have given up the right to live.”
“But I’m still murdering somebody,” Bentley said, looking at the gun in his hand.
“You’ve got permission from the highest authority to do it,” Roderick said. “And there’s the difference. You are a representative of Death himself … an extension of his power … an avatar, so to speak.”
“I’ll be the death that they deserve,” Bentley said with a slight, sad chuckle.
“Exactly.” The bird fluttered his ebony feathers. “A grim death.”
“Grim death,” Bentley repeated. “Even with this,” he said, lifting the gun. “Really not feeling like a representative—an avatar—of Death.”
“Not now,” Roderick said. “Got to look the part to feel it.”
“Look the part?” Bentley questioned. “I don’t understand what—”
“C’mon,” the raven said, taking flight and heading into the secret passage that would take them back to Hawthorne House. “I’ll show you.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
The innocent swarmed atop him.
He needed to remind himself of that—that they were indeed innocent of their actions—as they tried to kill him.
The siren sang on, her song permeating the circus workers’ minds, taking over and making them want to murder. The knife wound in his arm made it difficult to fight back, but he managed as best he could, trying to injure as few as possible.
They were not responsible, after all.
He fired into the leg of one of his attackers, followed by a shot that entered the upper arm of another. They cried out as the bullets hit them, the sudden pain breaking the siren’s connection and leaving the ones he had shot useless and bleeding upon the floor.
But there were others.
They continued to flow into the room, dragged by the siren’s song.
Grim Death watched as they came through the curtain and into the cramped space. He lunged, throwing his full weight into them and driving them back out into the main area where the Human Dynamo and the fancy gorilla had performed. He continued to fire his pistols, delivering one flesh wound after another, until he was completely out of bullets, and then he continued to fight them off by any means that he was able.
Death had made him strong, but every human body had a breaking point, and Bentley was certainly close to reaching his. The wound in his shoulder bled and throbbed painfully as he threw punch after punch, lashing out with feet, knees, and elbows in an attempt to immobilize his attackers.
The ugly man with the alcoholic’s nose who worked the test of strength game came at him with his overly large hammer, attempting to brain him into oblivion. Grim Death saw this as an opportunity and drove his fist solidly into the man’s red, bumpy nose, then relieved him of the giant hammer.
The hammer was exactly what Grim Death needed, giving him stopping power as well as reach.
The circus workers paused momentarily, watching him with dead expressions. Grim Death could feel the siren through the glassy, emotionless eyes of those she controlled, watching for an opportunity to end his life.
“No matter how many you control,” Grim Death growled, “it’s only a matter of time before I get back to you.”
The words seemed t
o inflame her all the more; the circus workers reacted in unison and rushed at him. He swung the hammer at the first, letting the weight of the enormous bludgeon do must of the work. The hammer was potentially dangerous, and he needed to be careful in how he wielded it. The sound of the hammer connecting savagely with flesh, followed by the crunch of breaking bone, became like a strange symphony of violence, but they kept on coming, and he kept on swinging his instrument and taking them down.
Bentley’s body was experiencing the effects of these efforts, and he cursed—was it he, or the essence of the deathly force that resided within him?—the inadequacies of the human design.
The siren must’ve somehow sensed this, calling upon even more of the circus folk, as well as rousing those who had fallen to his gunshots and hammer. They were swarming him again, their hands reaching, clutching, and grabbing at his clothes, attempting to drag him down, but he continued to swing the ponderous bludgeon.
Grim Death felt the painful burn in his arms, followed by the excruciating ache of cramping as he wielded his tool of mayhem. He backed up toward the stage where the Human Dynamo’s electrical contraptions sat silently. Perhaps if he were to put the stage and the heavy metal devices at his back, he thought, trying to come up with some way—any way—he might outlast the perpetual onslaught driven by the siren’s song.
The song was still trying for him, coming in through the canals of his ears and attempting to convince him to give up, to put down the hammer and succumb to the inevitable, but Grim Death would hear nothing of it—in fact, he would not listen. The only song he heard was the music made by his efforts at seeking justice for the lovely trapeze artist struck down by the intense jealousy of a monster from the deepest seas, and for the man who sat on death row awaiting punishment for a crime he did not commit.
The mind-controlled mob rushed him once more, and he backed away, his back striking the strange machinery used to feed the Human Dynamo his electrical sustenance. The machine came to life as he bumped up against it, humming and whirring as he continued his fight, swinging the hammer that seemed to be growing heavier by the second.
