by Anton Strout
Mason flexed his hand as he stood back up, calling his flashlight back over to him like he had Jedi powers. It swirled back into place above him, the light once more falling on the folder still in his hands. He pulled one of the papers from the folder, held it up, and shouted. “The head,” he said with excitement. “It seems to be the only way noted in the file.”
“Yes,” Quimbley said, quite pleased. “It appears so. Of course the head. Tends to work for most creatures, really. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?”
I felt the sparkle in his eye, the way his adrenaline pumped him up with hope. Just knowing how to take them down was enough to turn the tide of this battle. With renewed vigor, he swung his sword into action, beheading the creatures left and right like he was the Tasmanian devil on steroids.
Mason joined him in the fray, pummeling the creatures with an impressive type of telekinetic arcane, using nearby stones as his projectiles. The rocks alone weren’t enough to stop the monstrosities, but they were enough to hinder and distract them while Argyle Quimbley moved in to deal the deathblows. The dispatching of the remaining ghouls went quickly, and in the end, there were only the two agents from the Fraternal Order of Goodness left standing in a sea of headless ghouls.
“Are you all right?” Argyle asked, huffing and puffing. He dropped his sword to the ground and bent over with his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath.
“I believe so,” Mason said. He held his hand out under the flashlight and it dropped out of the air, slipping through his fingers. It clattered to the ground and the light went dead. “Can’t say as much for my light source.” He bent down to retrieve it, giving a groan. Young as they were, the pains of combat were still on them. They might bounce back quicker, but peril still took its toll.
The graveyard along the fissure was a little darker for the lack of light, but there was still enough ambient city light that I could make out Mason’s movements, even though they were far more shadowy. Despite that, I sensed another shift among the shadows and I felt Quimbley’s muscles tense.
“Mason!” Quimbley shouted. “Behind you!”
Mason stood up with his dead flashlight and spun about, but his focus was too high. The threat was at his feet. The upper half of the ghoul that Argyle had cut in two moments ago had clawed its way back up to the lip of the fissure. One of its arms lashed out, its sharpened talons catching the fabric of Mason’s pant leg. Using its other hand for leverage, the monster grabbed onto one of the jutting rocks down in the fissure and started pulling Mason toward him. That split second Mason wasn’t looking down undid everything, and as the creature tugged, Mason lost his balance. He fell down, wincing as several of the pointier rocks dug into his back.
Argyle Quimbley dove for his friend, his heart racing. Mason flailed on the ground, trying to flip himself over while kicking at the ghoul, but each move he made only drove him farther toward the fissure. Argyle caught Mason’s hand in his, rolling his partner over. Mason grabbed at anything he could with his free hand.
“Pull!” Mason screamed out, his face pure panic. Terror filled his eyes, the widened whites of them standing out in the dark graveyard.
Argyle pulled, but it was having little effect. “I am, blast it!” he shouted. “Just mind your feet! Don’t let that thing bite you.”
While sound advice by my reckoning, the thought of being bitten only caused Mason to panic more. He started lashing out with both of his feet over and over, catching the ghoul in its maw of decaying teeth every time. The creature cackled as if it were relishing the pain of it all. What was worse was the fact that with every kick, I could feel Argyle’s grip on Mason Redfield slipping.
The creature bit down on Mason’s boot with its gnarl of teeth, tugging hard on it. A chunk of it tore free in its mouth, taking a bit of sock with it and exposing the pale white flesh of his ankle. Time was running out. Mason was either going into the abyss or was about to become a ghoul thanks to a leg chomp.
Argyle let go of Mason with one of his hands and felt around on the ground. His fingers found the edge of his blade and he grabbed at it with care until he grasped the wooden tip that acted as its pommel. He wrapped his hand around it, slashing through the air as he turned back toward the fight. He lunged the sharpened steel tip toward Mason.
A new terror sprung up in Mason’s eyes as he saw the blade coming toward him. The blade flashed inches from his face, continued past it, and slid along the backs of his shoulders until it tore straight into the mouth of the ghoul, breaking off two of its teeth. It lodged there, keeping its maw from closing on Mason’s ankle. Argyle pushed forward until the blade came out of the back of the creature’s head and then twisted it.
The creature howled, letting go of Mason. The agent scrabbled back from the fissure while Argyle Quimbley kept the skewered monster at bay. He yanked the blade upward and it was too much for the creature. A horrid pop came from within its head before the bones of its jaw shifted, floating loosely under its rotting skin. Once Mason was clear, Argyle stepped forward, raised his boot to the creature’s head, and pushed it away to dislodge it from the sword. Broken, the creature fell back into the fissure, howling all the way as it fell.
Argyle backed away from the hole in the ground, not daring to turn his back on it. The tip of the blade hissed and bubbled underneath a thick slime of the creature’s innards. The ichor continued to eat away at the metal until the end of the blade fell off, bluntly hitting Argyle’s foot. Once he put some distance between himself and the opening in the ground, he turned his attention to his still-prone partner.
“Mason, are you all right?” he asked.
Mason scrabbled across the ground like a crab as he moved away from the edge of the fissure. He crawled toward Argyle Quimbley and rolled on his back, still shaking. His deep breaths of exhaustion turned to hysterical laughter as he sat up, brushing himself off.
“When you went for your sword, Argyle, I thought you were simply going to put me out of my misery.” Mason’s nerves were thick in his voice, the look on his face pained. “I thank you for being more levelheaded than that.”
Mason raised his hand out to Quimbley for a hand up, but the broken blade of Quimbley’s sword stayed in place between the two of them. Argyle made no move to lower it, keeping it leveled at his partner.
“Argyle…” Mason started, suspicion in his eyes.
“Now, now,” Quimbley said, sounding disarming. “Surely you recall Fraternal Order protocol. You show me your boot there, the one with the nice chunk out of it. If the skin’s not broken, then we can talk.”
Mason looked hurt, but offered up his foot with the torn boot over it. Argyle used the jagged tip of the sword to inspect the area, causing Mason to flinch in response.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Argyle. Be careful with your damned sword, won’t you? You’re just as likely to break the skin and let ghoul contagion in as if they had bitten me.”
Argyle ignored him and continued inspecting the hole in Mason’s boot until he was satisfied. He lowered the sword and offered his free hand to Mason. His partner took it, but there was a bit of fire in his eyes now.
“So very trusting of you, Argyle,” he spat out.
Quimbley remained calm and moved to pick up the broken end of the blade using a handkerchief, wiping it down.
“Nothing personal,” he said, “but you can never be too careful. You know that. Sentimentality can’t enter into things if we’re to survive in this world.”
“Such times,” Mason said, brushing himself off, “when friends may turn on friends.”
Without another word, Mason began hefting the corpses of the dead ghouls back into the fissure. Argyle’s tension in the silence weighed heavily on his heart, and I felt every ounce of it. There was nothing to say right now that would make the situation any less awkward, so instead he joined Mason in the task of body disposal.
When it was done, Mason stared down into the fissure, unmoving with a face that was a mask of dark seriousn
ess.
“Come, now, Mason,” Argyle said. “We’d best be going. I doubt we’ll see any more activity here. The sun should be up soon. I’ll see if anyone at F.O.G. knows of a good contractor to come fill this fissure in with concrete. You can go about carving protective runes in it later…” Argyle started along a path leading back through the cemetery, and then turned back when he realized Mason wasn’t following along with him. Quimbley turned to look back. Mason Redfield remained by the lip of fissure, staring down into the abyss. “Perhaps you would prefer to stay in the graveyard?”
This seemed to snap Mason out of his trance. “No, I would not,” he said, agitated. He turned and pushed past Argyle Quimbley as he headed up the main path leading out. “In fact, not only do I want out of this graveyard; I think I want out of this life.”
Argyle ran to catch up with him, using his cane to stop him. “Surely you don’t mean suicide?”
Mason looked horrified. “Good God, no,” he said. He pushed the cane out of his way and continued up the path. “I meant the Fraternal Order of Goodness.”
“You can’t be serious. We can’t afford to lose someone as promising as you. Think of what your leaving would mean. Who’s going to fight things like that?”
“I don’t know,” he said, weary, “but it won’t be me. I am sure there is a surplus of eager young men out there willing to die for a good cause, but after almost falling into that hole, I’m not so sure anymore. I would like to see thirty, forty, and, God willing, eighty.”
“Nonsense,” Argyle said, a bit dismissive in a cheering sort of way. “You’re just shaken, is all. Come. We’ll have a few drinks down at Eccentric Circles. In a few hours, you’ll feel fine.”
The look on Mason’s face was a distant one. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t suppose I will ever feel fine leading a life like this.”
Quimbley clapped his partner on the back. “Save any decisions for the light of day,” he said. The two men started up the graveyard path together, but only one of them looked certain in his steps.
I pulled myself out of the vision, feeling a bit shaky from how long I had been in it. The Inspectre had his head down in one of the files on his desk, but looked up when I took in a deep breath. He reached into his desk drawer, pulled out a small covered dish, and slid it across to me.
I pulled off the lid and looked inside. “Sugar cubes?” I asked.
“I am English,” he said. “I keep the sugar cubes around because I’m required by British law to take teatime. What did you see?”
I took turns between scarfing down the much-needed sugar like a show pony and explaining to the professor just what I had seen. He listened without interruption, giving a wan smile when I finished.
“I was probably around your age then,” the Inspectre said. “Thought a sword cane would be the most inconspicuous weapon, but I don’t think many young men of my time were seen with them.”
I looked down where it lay in my lap still and pulled the blade free from the cane. The metal was worn with age now and well corroded at the end where it had broken off. I rattled the hollow section of cane and the remaining piece of the sword slid out onto my lap. “You never fixed it.”
The Inspectre shook his head, solemn. “Some things are better left as a reminder of what can be broken,” he said. “My friendship with Mason, for one. He was my first partner in the field.” The Inspectre held his hands out. I set the pieces of sword in them, careful to lay the blades down flat. With care, the Inspectre slid them back into the cane, and then placed it back on the rim of the top shelf again. For several moments, he stood there with his back to me until I couldn’t take it anymore.
“What happened?” I asked. “After that night.”
The Inspectre turned around, looking a little older. He sat back down in his chair. “Mason simply didn’t come in the next day. Or the day after that. I heard from a colleague who ran into him in the street that he looked different. Happy, if I remember it correctly.”
“So he just walked away from the Order?” I asked, anger creeping into my voice.
“Now, now,” the Inspectre said. “Don’t judge so hastily. Mason simply chose to live his life… differently.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” I asked. “Did one of those ghouls actually bite him? He went evil?”
“Oh, heavens no! Surely you saw the look on his face when I pulled him out of that fissure. Mason was stone-cold scared and all too willing to walk away from this life.”
“But why?” I asked. “I mean, if I had seen all that he had seen, I don’t think I could turn away from a life of fighting the dark horrors that haunt this city.”
The Inspectre looked at me over the top of his glasses, his face fixed in a very serious expression. “The Fraternal Order of Goodness is not for everyone, Simon. You have to remember that in the old days, there was barely even a Department of Extraordinary Affairs. Life within F.O.G. is thankless work with long hours and few benefits, even fewer now with these recent budget cuts from downtown. An agent of the Order has to love what they do, I suppose, in some perverse, masochistic way.”
Who was I to try to second-guess Mason Redfield? He was a man I had met only twice—once through a psychometric flash and once as a corpse. “I guess I understand.”
The Inspectre gave me a surprised smile. “Do you, now?”
I nodded. “When I came to the D.E.A., I was searching for something, something greater than a paycheck. Up until that moment, I would have gone on using my psychometry for heists and low-level thieving forever …”
“You would have eventually been caught,” the Inspectre corrected.
“That’s my point,” I said. “I chose the D.E.A. and becoming a F.O.G.gie because I almost was caught—caught up in betrayal by the old crowd I ran with. You do recall Mina Saria, don’t you?”
The Inspectre nodded. “That psychotic redhead, yes? Currently missing and in possession of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, I believe.”
“Correct,” I said, shuddering at the thought of her. My encounters with her were harrowing enough to fill a book. “Surviving those near misses in my old criminal life with her woke me up. I wanted control of my life, a sense of purpose. Doing good, as simplistic as it sounds, is a far more rewarding fit. It gave me a better purpose.”
The Inspectre steepled his fingers against his chin as he considered what I said. “That’s what I meant about the Order not being for everyone,” he said. “Mason Redfield had his sense of purpose scared out of him that night. He turned to another purpose that had caught his eye prior to joining the Order—his love of cinema and a desire to teach. Ironically, it was his love of horror films that drove him to the Fraternal Order of Goodness in the first place.”
It was hard to imagine the semifailed swashbuckler at the head of a classroom, but hey, it worked for Indiana Jones. “Turned to teaching film,” I said. “Makes sense. There, the monsters can’t really get you.”
The Inspectre’s face sobered. “I hadn’t really considered that when it happened,” he said. “I was too angry at him. You see, at the time I was new to the game myself. I hated Mason for abandoning what I thought was his true calling. I handled myself… poorly.”
“How so?” I asked.
The Inspectre’s face turned red and he shifted in his chair, unable to find comfort in it. “I took his leaving as a personal affront. All I knew was that I was left on my own within the Order. I hated him for abandoning me like that, selfish as I was. Stubbornly, I refused to break in a new partner, insisting on doing everything on my own from then on. Some called me foolish, reckless… but to me it only meant I had to work harder and be more careful. I kept myself busy and it made it easy not to get in touch with Mason much once he left the Order. By the time I worked through my foolish anger, too much time had passed. Any thoughts I had of reconciling the situation would only have been too little, too late.”
The Inspectre fell silent.
“So you never talked to
him again?”
The Inspectre shook his head. “To what end?” he asked. “To give me closure? Mason walked away from it all, and who was I to come back into his life as a constant reminder of all the evils waiting to be confronted in the world? I kept tabs on him at first, naturally, making sure he was adjusting to the mundane world once again. He settled into the world of academia, and all I had to do was let things lie at that point.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I felt part of what you felt when I was in my vision. I saw the friendship you had with him. You could have still had that—”
“Don’t you think I know that?” the Inspectre snapped, barking at me. “Don’t you think I know what I lost that day?”
I jumped in my seat. Seeing the Inspectre this unnerved rattled me more than I expected.
“It kills me,” he continued, angrier with each word that flew from his lips, “that I should go so many years only to hear about the man’s death and worse, in a paranormal fashion on top of it. Do you know how much that guts me, how asleep on the watch it makes me feel?”
“Sorry,” I said. There was little healing power in the word, but maybe the Inspectre wasn’t looking to heal. Maybe he didn’t want someone to fix it. It had been broken too long for me to think anything I said would actually help. It was like trying to put a Band-Aid on a shark bite. Sometimes people just needed to vent and get it out of their system. I decided on another tack—getting back to business.
“So he was a teacher,” I said. “That’s as good a place to start as any. I should probably ask around and see if any of his students or other faculty noticed anything strange about him over the past few weeks.”
The talk of the Inspectre’s dead friend in an investigative capacity seemed to help him compose himself. His anger faded from his face and he nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “I would check his offices over at New York University. Take Connor with you. Mind you, use discretion.”
