Dark Detectives

by Stephen Jones

  In his mind, he mapped a route, zip-zagging around trouble spots, with a few tricky double-backs to throw off anyone who might be following.

  Before he stepped onto Upper Street, he took out his earpiece and left it on the table beside the door. He checked himself for any other devices with InfoWorld signatures.

  This was like being forced to walk after learning to fly. But doing without the wings made sense.

  He cycled down the street. All the surviving dogs of London were howling. He recalled an early-century saying, one Neil had been fond of: Real is real.

  *

  She was waiting for him outside the hotel, hair shining with sun, unafraid of the rays. His heart sank and he searched himself. “Real is real,” she said, almost apologising.

  She wasn’t wearing the hat, cloak and eyeshade today. That had almost been a Dr. Shade outfit, he realised.

  “We had real people following you, not just search engines.”

  “Then you knew, when you asked for the address …”

  “We just wanted to see if you fit the pattern. We’ve met a series of people like you. Almost a family tree. We’ve learned to appreciate you. You’ve fed into us.”

  “You’re not Geneviève?”

  She shook her head.

  “No. Of course not. Though I do look like her. She wasn’t my father or my mother, but she left something of herself in my mother, something that shaped me.”

  “You’re talking in the singular.”

  “About Mimsy, yes. I am Mimsy.”

  He had been right. Too late.

  “But we are Seven Stars.”

  “Is there a Geneviève?”

  “Yes. She’s inside. Upstairs.”

  He turned to go into the hotel.

  “By the way,” Mimsy said, “beware of the dogs.”

  The howling of all the dogs in London came from inside the hotel. A helmeted body lay jammed halfway out of the revolving door, protective clothing shredded.

  *

  Using a side-door, he got into the lobby and found the rest of a euthanasia krewe along with dogs alive and dead. He snatched up a jolt-gun and found it uncharged. Mimsy followed him. Indoors, she still shone. A red light, centred in her chest, radiated through transparent flesh and thin fabric. Star-points glinted, hard chips in the softer light. She was difficult to look at directly.

  The dogs ignored her, but came for him.

  They were too caught up in their own pain to concentrate on savaging him, but he still took too many nips and bites as he waded up the main stairs.

  He threw dogs away.

  On the first-floor landing, a giant Rottweiler, augmented as a guard minion, snarled at him. Its teeth were steel, probably envenomed. Veins stood out on its bulbous forehead. Its eyes were maddened red jelly.

  He tensed, expecting a final attack.

  Something burst inside the dog’s skull. Grey gruel squeezed out of its eyesockets. It fell like an unstrung puppet.

  He could almost hear the killing sound. His regrown front tooth ached. The plates of his skull ground against each other. Pressure built up inside his ears, producing pain in the drums and all the spaces of his head, throbbing under his cheekbones, around his eyes, at the base of his brain.

  Dogs pawed towards him and fell. Skulls detonated like bombs, spraying blood and brain matter across faded floral wallpaper.

  He took hold of the bannister and hauled himself up to the next landing. Mimsy skipped up beside him, unaffected. She had the mummy’s red eyescreens. That avatar had been closest to her.

  “This is just the first of them,” she told him. “The new plagues. This is the curse of dogs.”

  *

  The main door of the suite was open. A man lay dead in it. He wore a black single-piece suit and had the sign of the Seven Stars on his forehead. His throat had been torn out by some animal a little daintier than a dog. Neat slices opened his veins.

  “One of mine,” Mimsy admitted. “The old girl still has some bite.”

  He tried to equalise the pressure in his head, opening his mouth and forcing a desperate yawn. It helped momentarily.

  “Don’t worry,” Mimsy said. “The plague will soon be over.”

  She picked up a frothing Pekingese and chucked its chin. The little dog’s skull pulsed like a hatching egg. She pointed it away from her, and the dog’s eyes shot out on geysers of liquid brain.

  “Ugh,” she said, dropping the dead thing.

  He stepped over the man’s body.

  On a curtained four-poster bed was Mimsy’s transformed twin. This was the real Geneviève, arced like a bow, clawed fingers and toes hooked into torn bedclothes. She lashed from side to side, whipping long hair. Her bloody mouth was full of swollen fang teeth. Her eyes were red, but not with an LED light.

  Veins in her temples were swelling. “She’s not human, poor love,” Mimsy said. “She can hear things dogs can.”

  Jerome wanted to go over to the bed but Geneviève snarled at him to stay away. He minded she didn’t trust herself not to strike out at him.

  “If she isn’t human, what are you?”

  “Oh, I’m completely human,” Mimsy said.

  “You singular. What about you plural?”

  “Seven Stars,” she said, pulling down her neckline to show the red light burning under her ribs. It grew in intensity, as the unheard noise grew.

  The cries of the dogs were cutting off, one by one.

  Small objects on a bedside table rattled. Vibrations throbbed through Jerome, through the hotel, the city, the world.

  Mimsy’s flesh parted as the jewel rose to the surface. It climbed up into the base of her throat. It seemed to be talking.

  “We are come from afar,” it said. “We are the Plague Bringer.”

  For the last time, Mimsy spoke. “Just think,” she said, “within a minute, dogs will be an extinct species. And vampires.”

  The howling had all but stopped.

  The dogs were all dead. All over the world, dogs’ brains burst in their heads.

  Jerome ran to the bed and took Geneviève’s hand. He was not surprised at the ferocity of her grip. He looked into her red eyes, hoping for an answer.

  The thing that walked around in Mimsy Mountmain’s body filled the room with red light.

  Geneviève’s eyes started from their sockets.

  He could hear the maddening sub-audial whine now.

  Cracks in Geneviève’s forehead spread away from her temples, leaking thin blood, snaking up into her hair. Her mouth was open in a tooth-ringed circle.

  “You’re Jerome,” she said, through agony. “You are all that’s left.”

  Bloody tears the size of beetles crawled from her eyes, ears and nose.

  1416–2025?

  She sat up in bed, a final jolt of killing current shot through her. Her head came apart with a crack. Bloody hair whipped him across the face and she was a limp doll.

  The whine cut off, leaving a gaping silence.

  In that silence, a world was left mad.

  He turned, seeing red. Seven Stars walked out of the room.

  Lawrence Talbot

  BAY WOLF

  by NEIL GAIMAN

  Lawrence Talbot is, of course, the name of the character played by Lon Chaney, Jr. in the 1941 Universal movie The Wolf Man and its sequels, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945) and the Abbott and Costello spoof, Meet Frankenstein (1948).

  In the first film Talbot, the second son of a titled European family, returns to his ancestral estate situated in a distinctly Hollywood version of Wales. Mourning the death of his elder brother, Talbot is welcomed back by his father, Sir John (Claude Rains). However, when Larry attempts to save a local village girl from an attack by a gypsy werewolf, he is bitten by the beast before clubbing it to death with his silver-headed walking stick.

  Now cursed himself, Larry soon realises that even a man who is pure in heart can become a wolf when the wo
lfbane blooms and the moon is full and bright …

  Neil Gaiman’s “Adjustor”, Lawrence Talbot, was introduced in ‘Only the End of the World Again’ in the anthology Shadows Over Innsmouth (1994). A Lovecraftian tale of detection and Deep Ones, only Talbot’s lycanthropic private investigator could prevent the return of the Elder Gods. In the prose poem that follows, he once again confronts a modern mythological monster.

  Listen, Talbot. Somebody’s killing my people,

  said Roth, growling down the phone like the sea in a shell.

  Find out who and why and stop them.

  Stop them how? I asked.

  Whatever it takes, he said. But I don’t want them walking away,

  after you stopped them, if you get me.

  And I got him. So I was hired.

  Now you listen: This was back in the twenty-twenties

  in LaLaLand, down on Venice Beach.

  Gar Roth owned the business in that part of world,

  dealt in stims and pumps and steroids,

  recreationals, built up quite a following:

  all the buff kids, boys in thongs popping pumpers,

  girls popping curves and fearmoans and whoremoans,

  all of them loved Roth. He had the shit.

  The force took his payoffs to look the other way

  he owned the beach world, from Laguna Beach north to Malibu,

  built a beach hall where the buff and the curvy hung and sucked and flaunted.

  Oh, but that city worshipped the flesh: and theirs was the flesh.

  They were partying. Everyone was partying:

  dusted, shot up, cranked out,

  the music was so loud you could hear it with your bones,

  and that was when something took them, quietly,

  whatever it was. It cracked their heads. It tore them, left them offal.

  No one heard the screams over the boom of the oldies and the surf—

  that was the year of the Death Metal revival—

  It took maybe a dozen of them away, dragged them into the sea,

  death in the early morning.

  Roth said he thought it was a rival drug cartel,

  posted more guards, had choppers circling, floaters watching for

  when it came back. As it did: again, again.

  But the cameras and the vids showed nothing at all.

  They had no idea what it was, but still,

  it ripped them limb from limb and head from neck,

  tore saline bags out from ballooning breasts,

  left steroid-shrunken testes on the beach,

  like tiny world-shaped creatures in the sand.

  Roth had been hurt: the beach was not the same,

  and that was when he called me on the phone.

  I stepped over several sleeping cuties of all sexes,

  tapped Roth on the shoulder. Before I could blink

  a dozen big guns were pointing at my chest and head,

  so I said Hey, I’m not a monster. Well, I’m not your monster, anyway. Not yet.

  I handed him my card. Talbot, he said.

  You’re the adjuster I spoke to?

  That’s right, I told him, tough-talking in the afternoon,

  and you got stuff that needs adjusting.

  This is the deal, I said,

  I take your problem out. You pay and pay and pay.

  Roth said Sure, like we said. Whatever. Deal.

  Me? I’m thinking it’s the Eurisraeli mafia,

  or the Chinks. You scared of them?

  No, I told him. I’m not scared at all.

  I kind of wished I’d been there in the glory days:

  Now Roth’s pretty people were getting kind of thin on the ground,

  none of them, close up,

  were as plump and curvy as they’d seemed from up the beach.

  At dusk the party starts.

  I tell Roth that I had hated Death Metal the first time round.

  He says I must be older than I look.

  They play real loud. The speakers make the seashore pump and thrum.

  I strip down then for action and I wait

  on four legs, in the hollow of a dune.

  And days and nights I wait. And wait. And wait.

  Where the fuck are you and your people?

  asked Roth on the third day. What the fuck am I paying you for?

  Nothing on the beach last night but some big dog.

  But I just smiled. No sign of the problem so far, whatever it is, I said.

  And I’ve been here all the time.

  I tell you it’s the Israeli Mafia, he said.

  I never trusted those Europeans.

  Third night comes.

  The moon is huge and a chemical red.

  Two of them are playing in the surf

  boy and girl play,

  the hormones still a little ahead of the drugs. She’s giggling,

  and the surf crashes slowly.

  It would be suicide, if the enemy came every night.

  But the enemy does not come every night, so they run through the surf,

  splashing, screaming with pleasure. I got sharp ears

  (all the better to hear them with) and good eyes

  (all the better to see them with)

  and they’re so fucking young and happy fucking I could spit.

  The hardest thing, for such a one as me:

  the gift of death should go to such as these.

  She screamed first. The red moon was high and just a day past full.

  I watched her tumble into the surf, as if

  the water were twenty feet deep, not two,

  as if she were being sucked under. The boy just ran,

  a stream of clear piss splashing gold from the jut in his speedos,

  stumbling he ran, and wailing and away.

  It came out of the water slowly, like a man in bad monster-movie make-up.

  It carried the bronzed girl in its arms. I yawned

  like big dogs yawn and licked my flanks.

  The creature bit the girl’s face off,

  dropped what was left upon the sand,

  and I thought: meat and chemicals, how quickly they become

  meat and chemicals just one bite and they’re

  meat and chemicals …

  Roth’s men came down then, with fear in their eyes,

  automatic weapons in their hands. It picked them up

  and ripped them open, dropped them on the moonlit sand.

  The thing walked stiffly up the beach, white sand adhering

  to its greengrey feet, webbed and clawed.

  Top of the world, Ma, it howled.

  What kind of mother, I wondered, gives birth to something like that?

  And from high on the beach I could hear Roth screaming Talbot,

  Talbot you asshole, where are you?

  I got up and stretched, and loped naked down the beach.

  Well, hi, I said.

  Hey pooch, he said. I’m gonna rip

  your hairy leg right off and push it down your throat.

  That’s no way to say hi I told him.

  I’m Grand Al, said the monster. And who are you?

  Jojo the yapping dogfaced boy?

  I’m going to whip and rip and tear you into shit.

  Avaunt, foul beast, I said.

  He stared at me with eyes that glittered like two crackpipes

  Avaunt? Shit, boy: Who’s going to make me?

  Me, I quipped. I am.

  I’m one of the avaunt guard.

  He just looked blank, and hurt, a bit confused, and

  for a moment I almost felt sorry for him.

  And then the moon comes out from behind a cloud,

  and I begin to howl.

  His skin was fish-skin pale

  His teeth were sharp as sharks’

  His fingers were webbed and clawed,

  And, growling, he went for my throat.

  And he said what are you?

  he said ow, n
o, ow

  he said, Hey, shit, this isn’t fair,

  then he said nothing at all, not words now,

  no more words, because I had ripped off his arm,

  left it, fingers spastically clutching nothing,

  on the beach.

  Grand Al ran for the waves, and I loped after him.

  The waves were salt: his blood stank,

  I could taste it, black in my mouth.

  He swam, and I followed, down and down,

  and when I felt my lungs bursting

  the world crushing my throat and head and mind and chest,

  dark monsters turning to suffocate me,

  we came into the tumbled wreckage of an offshore oil-rig

  and that was where Grand Al had gone to die.

  This must have been the place that he was spawned

  this rusting rig abandoned, half-in, half-out the sea.

  He was three-quarters dead when I arrived. At first

  I kept my distance: weird fishy food he would have been,

  a dish of stray prions. Dangerous meat. And then,

  I kicked him in the jaw, stole one shark-like tooth

  that I’d knocked loose, to bring me luck.

  She came upon me then, all fang and claw.

  Why should it be so strange that the beast had a mother?

  So many of us have mothers.

  Go back fifty years and everyone had a mother.

  She wailed for her son, she wailed and keened.

  She asked me how I could be so unkind.

  She squatted, stroked his face, and then she groaned.

  After, we spoke, hunting for common ground.

  What we did is no business of yours.

  It was no more than you and I have done before,

  And whether I loved her or I killed her,

  her son was dead as the Gulf.

  Rolling, pelt to scales,

  her neck between my teeth,

  my claws raking her back …

  Lalalalalala. This is the oldest song.

  Later, I walked out of the surf.

  Roth was waiting in the dawn.

  I dropped Grand Al’s head down upon the beach,

  fine white sand clung in clumps to the wet eyes.

  This was your problem, I told him.

  Yeah, he’s dead, I said.

  And now? he asked.

  Danegeld, I told him.

  You think he was working for the Chinks? he asked.

  Or the Eurisraeli mafia? Or who?

  He was a neighbour, I said. Wanted you to keep the noise down.