Part jaguar.
Part ogre.
Part Kong of Skull Island.
The shadowthing roared. The guard fired his pistol once and was batted against the brick wall by a huge black tail. He lurched to the center of the corridor, unconscious but still on his feet, and was smashed against the opposite wall by a shadowfist.
Keys rattled. Hearthstone’s cell door swung open.
Hearthstone stepped from his prison and joined his ebony escort.
Soon the prison corridors swam with blood.
Later, laughing uncontrollably, the professor wandered the deserted city streets. He twisted The Shroud into a gnarled knot, a feeble arthritic thing. Blew the devil up like a balloon until it was a fat ebony clown. Made the demon crawl on its belly, an armless, legless freak.
Tired of frivolity, Hearthstone ripped the thing’s umbilical tail out of his wrist. The Shroud twisted on the pavement, a red-muscled horror that whined like a skinned dog. Hearthstone stomped it, spat upon it, laughed at it, gloried in the way it shrank from the dim glow of the streetlights.
He kicked it down the street, watching it carom like a child’s ball. Chased after it, kicked again. It bounced from one curb to the other, then suddenly sprang claws and raced toward the gutter. Nails clicked on wet pavement, and a second later it disappeared into a drainage opening.
Hearthstone ran to the curb. “Run away, coward!” he shouted, his eyes yellow in the glow of the streetlights. “Run away from the man who turned an electric chair into a throne!”
Dempsey padded forward, secure on a leash that Hearthstone held in his left hand. In his right he gripped the automatic, which he’d reloaded while the dog gobbled a second filet mignon.
No shadows, the professor told himself. No shadows here. And no shadows on the night the thing died. No shadows then, either.
It had been a great change for him, of course. Leaving America. Relocating to Japan. But the country had seemed ripe for the plucking at the close of World War II, and he’d cashed in his chips in America and reinvested in the land of the rising sun.
It proved to be a wise course of action. Soon Hearthstone doubled his money. Then he tripled it.
He waited for someone to challenge him. No one did. Not the Americans. Not the Japanese.
Not The Shroud.
But did it matter where the shadows hid? His bride… the doctor… the yakuza… even the dog… they had all walked among the shadows at one time or another, had they not? And surely they had all bled. Was there not the possibility? Wasn’t it always there?
As long as he remembered.
As long as he pulled over the riddle of The Shroud.
It was.
So, best to be careful.
Eagerly, Dempsey pulled at the leash as they moved down the hall, but the professor held him back. “Easy, boy. Easy, Dempsey. ”
The money didn’t make him feel much better. He took a young bride, but she didn’t make him feel much better, either. He remembered The Shroud’s promise that he would suffer before he died. And one evening he looked at his bride and realized that he was making himself suffer.
His bride had beautiful amber eyes. She could have been a sister to Anastasia White. And he had slipped the ring on her finger, not The Shroud. He alone had brought her into his home.
Hearthstone felt the sting of prophecy. He knew that as long as he remembered the past, he would suffer each time he looked into his bride’s eyes.
Dempsey stopped at the end of the corridor. Scrapped at the closed door there.
“I don’t know if we should disturb her.” Hearthstone was unable to banish fear from his voice. “The doctor says she hasn’t much time left. ”
The past was always there. Hearthstone was carrying it around, all of it, locked in his heart. All those old failures scrabbling over his innards like the claws of The Shroud.
But there was a way to put an end to it.
He would collect all the pieces of his past, everything that he hadn’t destroyed. He would stare at them, make his peace with them. And then he would crush them under the heel of his boot.
And then, and only then, could he begin to live again.
With shaking fingers, Hearthstone opened the door a crack. Closed it and shrank away.
Shadows. The room was full of them.
In there, in the dark, she was sleeping. Though Hearthstone had instructed Taoka to keep the room well-lighted at all times, the good doctor had obviously disobeyed his orders.
The professor stared at the black line of darkness where the bottom rail of the door fell just short of meeting the plush rug.
Calm yourself, Jacob. The thing is dead.
No. Not as long as you remember. Memory makes everything alive.
Drawing a deep breath, Hearthstone reached for the knob once again.
The yakuza brought a dozen old Irishmen to Hearthstone’s country estate. The professor watched their executions on a gray morning, so early that the event didn’t seem quite real. Afterwards, he returned to his bride’s bed for a few hours, where he dozed and dreamed of the beating he’d suffered years before. Waking, he talked to her of the executions and of his memories. He was delighted to find that both events seemed unreal, as if they’d happened to another man.
Three doctors followed the Irishmen. They came of their own free will, under the assumption that they were attending a medical conference. It was only while waiting in the cabin of Hearthstone’s yacht that they realized something was amiss, for even after the passage of several decades each man recognized the others as old colleagues. None of them remembered Jacob Hearthstone, but he was considerate enough to relate his own memories of his stay in the prison infirmary. When the pleasantries were over, he introduced the doctors to three bosozoku with sledgehammers in their hands.
Hearthstone opened the door. Just an few inches. He slipped his hand into the darkness, his fingers fumbling for the light switch.
Hearthstone felt better after the Irishmen’s visit. Better still after his audience with the prison doctors. But on the day the yakuza brought Anastasia White to him, he knew that he was going to feel very fine, indeed.
Hearthstone flicked the switch. Light washed away shadow.
That was all he needed.
Light was the bane of The Shroud.
Pure, clean, electric light.
Electric…
A voice from the past — a memory he’d thought erased now — an observation by a man once on intimate terms with The Shroud: “And now I’m startin’ to think that it ain’t a thing you can answer. It ain’t like a puzzle where all the pieces fit.”
And then a thought: if hatred could banish The Shroud, if insanity could defeat him, could the same elements, stored deep in the heart for much too long, return him to life when they were finally purged?
Anastasia was still beautiful. Still slim. Still a stylish dresser. But there was a sadness in her amber eyes that was somehow beyond description. And worst of all, she refused to play Hearthstone’s games. She refused to reminisce about the old days in San Francisco; she ignored his queries concerning the fate of The Shroud.
Hearthstone’s bride rested on the small bed, her black hair fanning over white pillowslips.
Somewhere beneath that hair, dark shadows lurked.
Dempsey growled, snorting at the antiseptic odor of the chamber.
Silently, Hearthstone approached the sickbed. “My dear, won’t you smile for me?”
Anastasia’s silence was like stone. Hearthstone’s heart sank. She would give him nothing. She knew her life was lost, and she would make no desperate pleas, no bargains that he could betray.
She refused him satisfaction.
He stared at her, thinking of the days when he’d mulled Shroud riddles with such enthusiasm, thinking of all his hypotheses and conclusions…
…wondering at the fiery glow in her amber eyes.
Hearthstone’s bride did not move. He brushed her hair, let his fingers drift to th
e plastic oxygen mask strapped over her mouth. “My goodness.” He laughed. “Of course you can’t smile with this thing in the way.”
Hearthstone took the katana from its case, unsheathed the weapon, and showed its silver blade to Anastasia White. “I have been thinking about our friend The Shroud,” he began. “I’ve been thinking about the way it scurried through a sewer grate when I was close to killing it. For many years I thought it was down there, under the city, licking its wounds.” Hearthstone stared at Anastasia’s eyes, recognizing the gaze of an unexpected guest. “Now I don’t think that anymore… Oh, I think it’s licking its wounds all right. I still think that. But I think it found another sewer, one that runs with blood.”
His brides breaths came short and fast without the oxygen mask, and he prodded the corners of her mouth. “Smile… smile…”
“I’m not going to kill you, Anastasia. It’s The Shroud I want. It’s always been The Shroud.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. She could not keep her silence. “Leave him alone,” she begged. “He’s tired. He’s broken… You’ve beaten him once. Isn’t that enough?”
“No, never enough.” Hearthstone raised the katana, held it to her eye, thinking of the way The Shroud used human hosts, recalling the thing’s aversion to light and the way it had scuttled for the protection of a dark sewer. He remembered the prison cell where he’d tempted the creature. He remembered the insane hatred he’d used to defeat it.
But he hadn’t killed it.
It ran. It took refuge.
Anastasia White. The Shroud.
Hearthstone grinned. “Any port in a storm. Is that not the way of it, my dear?”
The professor prodded open an eye. Stared at the amber orb.
Blank. Nothing there. Anastasia was…
No. This was his bride.
He lifted his bride’s head and examined the white pillowslip. Next he drew back the sheets and blankets and checked them carefully. Satisfied he ran his fingers through his bride’s hair; but still found nothing there.
He sighed. Stepped back. Impossible. Taoka was dead. And Machii was dead. And Dempsey was loyal.
His bride…
Impossible. But something was here. He could feel it.
And whatever it was, it was more than a memory.
He pulled Anastasia to him. Parted her mouth and kissed her. He forced his tongue against hers, felt it squirm away.
Like that night in the prison, he thought. Like The Shroud, shrinking from my power.
Anastasia pushed at him. “He’s weak.” She sobbed. “He’s nearly dead, just leave him be. Let him die in peace.”
Hearthstone slashed Anastasia’s shoulder with the katana, then drew the blade across his palm. “Come on, you bastard,” he said. “It’s time to face your master.”
Hearthstone took the stainless steel scissors from the top of the dresser. He cut open his bride’s nightgown, then drew it apart.
He stared down at the purple scar that ran the length of her breastbone.
Black blood oozed from Anastasia’s wound. She pressed a hand against it, stemming the flow, her fingers trapping the creature that desperately wanted out. “You won’t have him,” she said, her eyes glowing with defiance. “Not while I’m alive.”
“Very well,” Hearthstone said.
His bride shivered as the scissors touched her sternum.
Anastasia shivered as Hearthstone drove the katana into her breast. She fell back, slipping off the short blade, collapsing onto the floor with hardly a sound.
Hearthstone dropped to his knees and pressed his wounded hand against Anastasia’s bloody chest.
Her heart wasn’t beating.
She wasn’t breathing.
She wore a slight grin that fell somewhere short of a smile.
“Come out, you bastard,” he whispered, his eyes everywhere at once: on the shadows that swam beneath the furniture; on Anastasia’s blood; on the hem of her silk dress, which ruffled under a breeze from the open window. Each image burned into his brain as if branded there.
“Come out, you coward.” He closed his eyes but saw the room, the blood, Anastasia’s dress. “Come out and let me forget.”
Hearthstone held his hand to Anastasia’s breast, whimpering in frustration, until her blood began to dry.
He sat there alone, but for his memories.
Hearthstone stared at his bride’s lips. At the scissors in his hand.
No, it couldn’t be.
He wouldn’t do this.
His bride was an innocent. She was not possessed. Neither was Dr. Taoka. Nor the yakuza, Mr. Machii. Nor Dempsey.
This was madness. Time had passed, so much time without incident. The Shroud was dead.
Dead to the world.
Dead, everywhere, but in Jacob Hearthstone’s memory.
Anyone…
The professor turned toward the mirrored wall and stared at his reflection. What he saw didn’t match his memories.
If he had to remember everything, why couldn’t he remember how to be the man he once was? Young, strong, confident…
Now he was none of those things.
Hearthstone laughed at the feeble old man in the mirror. Here was the true seat of memory. A withered receptacle, nothing more. “Wipe the slate clean, grandpa. Purge the hatred, the insanity. Make afresh start. ”
Hearthstone turned the scissors on himself and drove the blades deep into his chest.
Anywhere…
Blood coursed from the wound.
Anytime…
The shadows flowed over him, along with the laughter, along with a whispered promise.
Those who are evil must suffer, then die.
Hearthstone pressed cold fingers against the wound and felt warm blood pump from his heart. “Are you demon or angel?” he asked.
The answer came from the shadows.
I am… The Shroud.
TOMBSTONE MOON
Black entered the cemetery shack and tossed the severed ear onto the desk, between a can of Brown Derby beer and a salami sandwich that was missing a bite.
The desert wind whipped through the open doorway, salting the warped floorboards with gritty sand. Black was already sick of the desert — sick of the earthy smell, sick of the unyielding heat, sick of the sand in his boots.
He closed the door, but that didn’t help much. The shack’s only window was open a fraction of an inch, and the steady wind whistled through its corroded metal lips. The sound was unsettling. Black leaned on the latch, but the window was rusted in place and wouldn’t budge.
Black sighed. Only open a fraction of an inch, but a fraction of an inch was enough to mess with his senses.
Well, there was nothing to be done about it. Black rubbed a clean circle on the grimy glass. His ’73 Toyota Corolla sat about twenty feet from the shack. The engine ticked and pinged, trying to cool without much success. Rust spots on the hood and trunk shone like pools of dark rum in the light of the setting sun.
A week’s parking at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas had cost twenty-five bucks, and that little fact irritated Black. He doubted he could sell the damned car for twenty-five bucks. But the Toy was inconspicuous, and that was the important thing.
Black scanned the desert. There wasn’t much to see besides his car. Whistler’s limo was nowhere in sight. Neither was the prospector’s Ford pickup — Black had hidden it in an arroyo on the other side of the old state road. Only the cemetery lay before him, a borderless expanse dotted with tombstones that had been sandblasted blank over a period of forty years.
Anonymous graves, forgotten by a town that had folded when the interstate opened. Black thought about that. If your grave went untended, if your sacred piece of ground was forgotten — or worse, desecrated — was there a chance that something evil might get its hands on your soul even though you’d been laid to rest in a proper Christian cemetery?
Black wondered if it made a difference. He supposed that every grave was forgotten so
oner or later. He toyed with the severed ear, flipping it from between the beer and the sandwich. He’d never thought about graveyards, or tombstones, or Christian burial before in his life. He’d never thought about heaven or hell, either. He knew that such worries could get in the way of a man in his business, and he’d always felt fortunate to consider them a waste of his time.
Before today.
Even now, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to start thinking about those things. He’d never felt comfortable tackling life’s little intangibles.
He looked at the sandwich and his stomach growled.
The prospector wasn’t coming back for it.
The salami was greasy and good. Black ate the meat and threw away the bread, because the latter was salted with sand. He chased salami with warm Brown Derby beer and tossed the empty can over his shoulder. It bounced off of a filthy duffle-bag and rolled to a stop against the rusty blade of the prospector’s shovel.
Black wanted to sort through the old-timer’s duffle, but he didn’t want Whistler to come barging in while he was at it. Instead, he pulled up a chair and rested his feet on top of the desk.
Soon it was dark. Black lit a few candles and watched faint shadows dance on a map of the cemetery that was mounted next to the door. The map was dotted with black pins, except for one spot in the right-hand corner where a white pin stood out, as stark and unexpected as a corpse at a family reunion.
Black grinned, thinking I Bury the Living. He’d seen that movie late one night in a cheap hotel room in Denver. It starred Richard Boone, and that was the only reason that Black had stayed awake for it, because more than a few clients had told him that he resembled the young Richard Boone. He did, kind of— they were both all ruined around the eyes, and they both had noses that were of equal thickness from skull to tip, like carelessly fitted hunks of pipe.
Anyway, the movie was about a guy who thought that he was murdering people by sticking black pins in a map that marked presold cemetery plots. Boone was pretty good in it, worrying that he was some kind of psychic monster or something. It wasn’t Have Gun, Will Travel, but it was okay, until the ending.
The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists Page 26
