Nightmare City: Part One: A Post-Steampunk Lovecraft Adventure

by Jack Conner

  Heather took care of them, feeding and clothing them, making sure they were clean. She even provided some entertainment, directing a group of the inmates to play some musical instruments they’d been given, and they weren’t bad, Kat thought. No great, but not bad. Heather introduced the dolls to Kat, and vice versa, and Kat found that many were personable, though the lot were strung-out, scared and eager to return to their drugs. She could hardly blame them.

  Outside it was quiet, the Returners having withdrawn into their Arches for the day. Katya had gone out onto the balcony to smoke and stare at the horizon. While she had, her gaze had drifted to the Arches and she tried not to imagine the thousands of Returners pressed into the stifling, putrid chambers like undead sardines, shuffling and reeking of old rot and fresh blood. Instead she focused on the sunlight shining on the old, leaning buildings and sparkling on laundry lines strung between open windows. Brightly colored clothes billowed and flew on the wind. Pasty, strange men and women made their way to tanneries, merchant shops and the inevitable factories.

  But they did not go in, at least some of them. A milling crowd took shape outside one factory, then another, and people chanted things that were too far away for Katya to hear, some holding up wooden placards. They formed a circle and marched in a ring. A few threw rocks at the factory.

  “What’re they doing?” Katya asked.

  Heather smiled. “They’re recruits of the Underground Brotherhood. They’re striking.”

  “Striking?” Katya had heard whispers about the Brotherhood, had seen the signs, but striking was unknown in Lavorgna, even though she’d heard of it happening elsewhere. “Won’t Loqrin just bust them up?”

  “Maybe. But remember, it’s not his factory, it’s the Guild’s. They pay him a percentage, but that’s it.”

  “What do the workers want?”

  “Better working conditions, I guess. Shorter days. Fewer days. You know they work like twelve hour days or more, and only get a day off every month if they’re lucky. And they’re always getting ground up in the machines they work with, or poisoned by the chemicals, and who takes care of ‘em then? Not the Guild.”

  Katya nodded. It sounded good, it sounded right. But she didn’t think it would work. The Guild wouldn’t let them. No one could take on the Guild, especially not these pasty, misshapen men of the Hollows.

  “Why do they look so bad?” Kat asked. “You know, the Hollowers? No offense.”

  Heather was eating an apple injected with brandy. Munching, she’d said, “You’re really from Outside, aren’t you?”

  “Well, the Fifth Ward. I guess it does seem like another planet, doesn’t it?”

  Heather spat out a bite of the core. It arced down and away. A grackle swept in and gobbled it up, then flew on. “Loqrin doesn’t allow in much fresh food, and he keeps people living packed together like rats. Lots of disease, lots of growing up stunted, without the right food.”

  “Malnourished.”.

  “Whatever. It all adds up, over generations. Lots of shut-ins.”

  Katya had raised her eyebrows. “Generations?”

  Heather finished the apple, pulled out a syringe and went about tying a tube around her upper arm and sticking herself with the needle. As the waves of the drug washed over her, she smiled blissfully and said, “Yeah.”

  Then the thick metal doors of the doll house flung open and in poured Loqrin, smiling from ear to ear, a dozen Returners at his heels. All were dressed in tuxedos and wheeled gleaming carts before them.

  “I’ve brought a feast!” he announced, looking even more handsome than usual, dressed in eloquent evening wear, shaven to within an inch of his life. Not close enough, Kat thought.

  The harem stirred sluggishly. At the sight of all the food, they roused themselves and shambled over to the carts. Sumptuous smells drifted up, and Kat’s stomach rumbled despite herself. She hated Loqrin with every fiber of her being, but for a bite of fresh food she might be willing to make his death throes a little briefer.

  “Ta-da!” Loqrin jerked the domed silver cover off one cart.

  “Oh, delish!” someone exclaimed. “Frogmouth, my favorite!”

  Indeed, revealed on the platter was a huge toad, braised and with its great gaping mouth stuffed with rum-laced cherries. More and more covers sprang from trays, and the dolls stared in anticipation at the feast before them. Kat, who had never seen such a banquet, was suitably impressed.

  The inmates lunged on the food. Kat had to spring quick or go hungry. But there was plenty, and it was all rich, all decadent, the food of kings and queens. There was glazed eel stuffed with pâté; mutant lobster from the Qarzatl region of the sea, injected with an alchemical butter-rum sauce that made every bite burst with flavor; braised giant slug on a bed of rice; raw electric eel fitted with alchemically-produced collars so that each bite delivered a painful but also orgasmic jolt of electricity; big-mouth bass stuffed with live snakes; squidsticks; fried turtle; and more, much more.

  The inmates ate like barbarians. Kat had known they weren’t aristos, but they acted like they had never even heard of table manners. It was a feeding frenzy of drug addicts, and Kat was obliged to step lively. It wasn’t long before she was stuffed and pleasantly reeling, both from the rich food and the alcohol and drugs that laced at least half of the offered items.

  Throughout it all, Loqrin stood back, watching them with a small, secret smile. His presence creeped Katya out, but not enough to dissuade her from eating.

  “I hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves,” Loqrin said afterward. “I’ve got to run. Later I’ll be back, and then I’ll enjoy myself.”’

  A few scared murmurs greeted this, and his eyes lingered on Heather as he spoke.

  “For now I have things to do,” Loqrin said. He left, Returners in tow. The door clanged loudly when he was gone.

  Heather sniffed. “This is it,” she said. “This is the day he takes me next door, like he did Abby last week. Then you’ll never see me again.”

  “It’ll be alright,” Katya said. Somehow.

  Once her fellow inmates were safely ensconced in their stupors, Katya retrieved her sheet-rope from where she’d hidden it in the back of the linen closet. Last night she’d had to pull so hard at the rope to get it down that the heel on the lime-green shoe had cracked; thus she spent some time removing it and knotting the end of the rope about its twin. Done, she stepped out onto the balcony, feeling the cooling wind and relishing it, then hurled her makeshift grapple overhead. This time it only took her two tries to secure it to the roof, and with food giving her strength and her mind afire with hate, she shimmied up the rope with somewhat more ease than last night. Like a drunken monkey, she thought.

  The wind blew strongly atop the roof. She hunkered low and pressed against it. Her short hair streamed out. Her eyes misted.

  Before her the Hollows sprawled out like a vast bowl miles wide, a crater about to collapse in out itself. It made her dizzy, and she swallowed. Hunched against the wind, she fought her way over the strangely rounded roof, the coil of her rope wound about a shoulder.

  She moved in the opposite direction from Loqrin’s suite.

  The sun touched the horizon to the west. By its fading light Kat tried to determine if it would be possible to scramble down the entirety of the Arch and to escape via the roof. The Arch was slightly more rounded than an inverted U, but each side looked very steep just the same. It might be possible to climb down it using the rounded formations as grips—her career as a thief had taught her how this might be done—but the formations were very smooth and offered little purchase, as she found now, with the wind knocking her from side and side and the Arch beneath her slipping under her feet. She was barefoot, but even that didn’t help much. The masonry of the Arch chilled her soles, and the wind irritated her eyes.

  So, no escape that way. How could she get out of here when the time came? And what if she wanted to take the inmates with her?

  With a sigh, she abandoned the scouting
mission and marched back in the other direction. At least the roof was dry tonight, unlike last night.

  After some effort, she reached the section over Loqrin’s apartment, pressed herself flat, belly to the roof—cold!—then leaned over the side as far as she could go. Upside down like a bat, she peered into Loqrin’s suite. Blood rushed to her head, and her temples pounded. All she saw was darkness and a few dim lamps—alchemical lamps, red and green, set on low. From this angle she couldn’t see much. She’d have to go down.

  “Damn.”

  She secured the green shoe around the mounds and lowered herself into the corner of Loqrin’s balcony. Sure enough, from here she commanded a much better view of the Boss’s apartment. Good. And bad. The setting sun cast a crimson glow over the city, making blood seem to coat the listing buildings. Kat was vulnerable. It was darker inside than outside, and she might be seen. Damn it.

  She ducked deeper into the corner and cautiously stuck her head around the side. Better, but she still should’ve waited for nightfall. She just couldn’t have idled around the Dolls’ House any longer. She’d had to be up and doing something to hurt Loqrin, and now.

  Inside Loqrin’s suite alchemical lamps throbbed, pulsing like evil little hearts. Their weird, slow light picked out a long table and gleaming instruments on a nearby tray. Dark hands moved, grabbing up a scalpel. The shape the hands belonged to bent over, working on something. The instrument table and the man’s bulk blocked Kat’s view of what was on the slab, but at last she made out small feet and narrow ankles.

  Abby. Heather had said he’d taken a girl into his lair last week. Shit. What was he doing to her, anyway?

  Loqrin selected a small gear and some piping from the table. It was then that Kat understood. Abby, if that was really her, was dead; Loqrin had killed her, one way or another. But it wasn’t over for the poor girl. Bastard’s trying to bring her back. A clockwork Abby. An Abby that would never grow old. Kat’s fists clenched.

  Loqrin’s work continued at a slow but steady pace, but Kat couldn’t bear to watch. The sky grew dark, and the wind blew cold. Looking out at the skyline, she crossed her arms over her chest and rocked back and forth. Some time later she glanced up when the sound of chimes rang throughout the apartment.

  Loqrin cursed (Kat could hear it through the glass, only slightly muffled) and moved toward the vault door on the opposite side from the harem door. He passed a cabinet full of books and weird things in jars. Something like a fetus with roots pressed up against a curved glass wall. Another thing that was all eyes and tentacles glowed in the red light, seeming to swell and shrink as the light pulsed.

  Loqrin threw the wheel, opening the door.

  There stood two of his goons, carrying a man between them, obviously a captive; he was naked and bruised. When she saw the goons, Kat realized that the other half of the Arch must house Loqrin’s men and mob operations. One half for business, one half for pleasure, his harem and his clockwork freaks.

  “Is it past sunset already?” Loqrin said, shaking tacky blood from his fingers.

  “Yeah, Boss,” said a goon.

  “Strange. Time seems to stop when I’m ... stopping time.” Loqrin eyed the bruised man skeptically. “So you’re our next morsel, eh? You’ll do, I suppose. But we must make this quick. I’m expecting word on the strike at any moment.” To his men, he said, “Show him in.”

  Morsel? Kat frowned.

  Loqrin led the way deeper into his suite, and the goons dragged the limp man after him. The captive was thin, with wiry muscles and curly black hair. Whiskers covered his face. Not bad looking for a Hollower, Kat thought. She hoped nothing bad was going to happen to him, but that seemed unlikely.

  Loqrin passed into a dark area of his suite and crouched. An alchemical lamp flared into life, bathing him in a bloody red glow. Like all alchemical lamps, it wasn’t lit by flame, but by glowing liquid that occasionally moved inside the orb as if it had a life of its own. For some reason, alchemical lamps had always disturbed Kat. No more so than now.

  Loqrin stood before a squat black slab, and beyond it lay some blocky machine with strange antennae curling up from it like stalks.

  Loqrin knelt before the slab, pressing his forehead to it, and muttered something Kat couldn’t hear. She couldn’t see his face, but his body language showed a sense of formality—solemnity, even.

  At length he rose and stepped around to the other side of the slab so that he faced his men and their prisoner. He gestured curtly, and the goons forced the man to his knees so that he leaned over the altar ...

  Loqrin opened a panel in the blocky machine.

  ... and the goons shoved the man’s head into an aperture. The captive could only protest weakly; he seemed half-conscious at most. Drugged, Kat thought. She felt her breath catch in her chest. What are they doing to him?

  Loqrin flicked a series of switches, and lights flashed from the machine. Sparks rippled up the antennae. The very air around it seemed to blur.

  Kat’s eyes widened and a shiver coursed up her back.

  Loqrin twirled dials and punched buttons. All at once the interior of the machine exploded with light. Kat had to blink against it. A sound like radio static burst from the thing, and what looked like white electrical sparks surrounded the naked man’s head. Over the roar of the static, Loqrin shouted something that Kat didn’t understand; it didn’t even sound like it was in any language she had ever heard.

  As suddenly as it had started, the light and noise faded. Loqrin unstrapped the man, and he slipped backward and thunked to the ground. He was limp as a noodle, but his chest rose and fell. Something about him wasn’t right. He looked somehow less.

  Kat’s vision blurred. Loqrin, that sonofabitch, I’ll get him I’ll—

  Shame took her. She had stood there and done nothing, just let Loqrin do whatever he had done.

  Never again, she thought. I’m so sorry, whoever you are, I was so scared, it all happened so fast—

  “He’s of no more use to me,” Loqrin said. “His mind is gone now. I couldn’t even make a Returner out of him. Feed him to my children in the Arches.”

  “No,” Kat choked out.

  The goons nodded, picked up the body and carted it from the suite. As they did, Kat got a better look at the victim. To her shock, she saw that the man’s head steamed, just like Fedrik’s head after the haunt had attacked him last night.

  “Shit,” she said.

  Loqrin’s head jerked sideways. He stared right at the balcony.

  Kat leapt back into the corner where she knew she couldn’t be seen. The rope dangled above. If Loqrin opened the door she was screwed. Fuck fuck fuck. And what had she seen, anyway? What had Loqrin done? She was in way over her head. Jack—traitor!—had been right.

  Footsteps approached the balcony.

  Fuck! There was no time to ascend the rope.

  Shaking, she rose to her feet and bunched her fists. She still had her rings, damn it. If Loqrin wanted a fight, she’d give him one.

  A hand rattled the handle of the terrace. Kat’s heart nearly stopped.

  A radio squawked inside the suite. She heard Loqrin curse.

  The footsteps retreated.

  Kat breathed a long sigh of relief and slouched back against the wall. Her legs shook with released tension, and her palms oozed sweat.

  “What is it?” Loqrin’s voice barked. A radio hissed. “Good,” he said. “Bring them up.”

  By the time Katya heard this last part, she was already halfway up her rope. She hauled herself onto the roof and dragged the rope with her. Just as she pulled up the end of it, she heard the door slide open below. Loqrin stepped out onto the balcony, looked around.

  Jaws clamped tight, every nerve on fire, Kat edged back, slowly and silently. The moment seemed to stretch forever. Loqrin looked one way, then another. He began to turn—his eyesight would come into contact with the roof—Kat continued to edge back—Loqrin finished his turn—

  She jerked out of view.r />
  Loqrin grunted. Footsteps marched inside, and the door slammed shut. Kat expelled a deep breath. Ragged moths fluttered in her belly, and she wanted to sink to her knees. Damn, but she could use a cigarette.

  Dimly, she heard Loqrin speaking on his radio transmitter. Not long after, the vault door clanked open again. Very carefully, Kat lowered herself to the roof and hung over. The vault door wasn’t as deep into the suite as Loqrin’s Returner lab was and so she could see it, if just barely. Savage-looking men with pistols and repeating rifles entered the room, shoving bound and hooded men before them. The men looked as if they’d been beaten, and their poor patchwork clothes were ripped and bloody.

  “Only six?” Loqrin demanded.

  One of the goons stepped forward. Quite tall, a great white scar ran down from his hairline, through one eye, down his cheek to his jaw. It deformed that side of his face and caused a slight lisp when he spoke.

  “The strikers were prepared.,” he said. They figured we’d be comin’. We’ve hit too many before. Fuckin’ Brotherhood!”

  “We’ll have to change our strategies, won’t we?” Loqrin said. “Or find a more permanent solution.” He’d changed for the event, Kat saw, donning fresh clothes and wiping the blood off his face and hands. Kat was surprised. He didn’t seem the type to dress up for his thugs—unless there was some else he was dressing up for. “Well, that will keep for another day. For now—ah! I think I hear it.”

  For a moment Kat wondered what he was talking about, and then she heard the roar of wind and the beating of distant propellers. She turned to see the zeppelin swing up from the south, drifting fast over the rooftops on the far side of the ridge. It must have a hangar somewhere nearby, probably in some warehouse or other. The airship was just a huge dark shape, drawing closer and closer, occasionally blocking out the moons. It occurred to her that the pilot might see her, so she pressed herself into the undulating mounds of the roof.