I don’t need to tell you who I dreamed of while unconscious.
5The Errand
I stared into the barrel of West’s revolver and realized that I had been duped. West was not at all what he claimed to be and I should’ve known that his job offer had been too good to be true. God knows what I’d gotten myself into.
“So do you shoot me now?” I asked, trying to remain as calm as possible.
“You could help me dead,” he answered, “but you’re much more valuable alive.”
I frowned. “What makes you think I’ll help you?”
“Do you wish to end up like him?” West chuckled, gesturing toward the figure strapped to the steel slab.
I stared in horror at the pathetic creature and then turned to West. “Was that your previous assistant?”
He shook his head and smiled. “No. That was a squeamish little fellow that upped and vanished. I’ll find him, though.”
“Then what’s the dead kid for, you sick bastard?”
“Raw materials,” he answered. “You’ll need to accustom yourself to such things.”
I glared at West in silence, trying to find a way out of this nightmare. Nothing feasible came to mind at the time.
“This is quite a shock to you,” West said. “You’re currently at a loss as to how to proceed but soon you’ll begin to get ideas. If anything should happen to me, I’ve made arrangements with an associate to release certain papers of mine. These papers implicate you in my endeavors and will result in your incarceration. So, it is in your best interest to ensure that nothing unfortunate happens to me.”
I spat on the floor. “Blackmail, Doc? That’s low, even for you.”
“Spare me the clichés,” West replied. “Just be certain that you understand your situation.”
“Oh, I understand all right,” I answered. “Just remember, West, that every dog has his day.”
“Not for a long time,” said West, lowering the pistol. “Now get over here and take this cadaver off my hands. In the corner you’ll find a refrigeration tank. Undress her, drop her in, and lower the lid.”
I felt sick to my stomach but did as West demanded. For all my threats, I was really over the barrel and had little choice but to follow orders until I could somehow get the drop on him.
I slept poorly after that and kicked the sweat-stained sheet off me. Relieved that I had escaped some pretty bad dreams, my stomach clenched up when I remembered that nightmares were the least of my problems.
West had laid out the facts the night before and given me my marching orders. I was to follow his instructions without question and if things went well he would release me from his service after a few months. I found his assurances hard to swallow, thinking of his former assistant and what had become of him. I longed to strangle the perverted little bastard but needed to protect myself in the process. I only half believed that an associate was prepared to implicate me if something happened to the good doctor but wasn’t prepared to take any chances.
After getting dressed, I went to the kitchen and made coffee. West wasn’t around—apparently still in bed after the late night—but I still didn’t have much of an appetite. Still, I needed the caffeine for the task ahead. West had a big job for me. A job that I dreaded.
It seems that West, from one of his mysterious associates, had received word that Trevor Towers was in the Boston area asking questions about his whereabouts. My job was to find Towers, subdue him and bring him to West. That would be easier said than done. I wasn’t afraid of Towers but the guy was a tough bastard when it came down to a fight. I would have to become as ruthless as he if West’s plan had any hope for success.
I downed the mug of coffee in one gulp, sighed, and mentally reviewed my plan of action. I was to drive the Lorraine to Boston, go to an address West had given me, and talk to a man named Father Murphy. I had really been a dope to get involved with West and hoped to God I’d be free of him the first chance I got. Maybe I could stumble across some useful information on my trip to Boston.
My drive to Boston was uneventful and I found the address West had given to me with little difficulty. As soon as I was in town, I stopped over for a quick visit to get a gun off a shady jailbird I used to know. A few minutes later I discovered that Towers was already in the clutches of West’s associates and all that remained was for me to transport him back to Falmouth. Towers was unconscious when I saw him and looking pretty much the worse for wear. I wasn’t surprised in the least after taking a look at the ugly mugs who accompanied Towers with me on the return trip.
I had managed to get myself in a hell of a bind but it seemed a minor matter compared to what was probably in store for Towers. I was damned glad to not be in his shoes. My only plan was to keep my fingers crossed and hope that an opportunity would arise for me to help him before it got any worse. I had no doubt that things would definitely get worse.
6Ties That Bind
There’s no greater cliché for a man in my line of work than waking up in the clutches of the guy he’s been hired to catch. That was the scenario I found myself in when I awoke, minutes, hours, or days after the nap the black man and his one-legged friend had sent me to, and like hell could I do anything about it.
I’d been through worse; at least this time, tied to a chair in an unknown room, I wasn’t surrounded by sour-faced Huns. Seeing the pure look of evil in the eyes of the man sitting across from me stopped that from being much of consolation, though.
Small, thin and blonde, I recognized him as none other than Herbert West. He stared at me like a predator from behind the large, thick lenses of his spectacles. If it hadn’t been for the red smears on his lab coat and the abattoir he called a lab behind him, he could have almost passed for a real doctor. He even had a clipboard and stethoscope, for God’s sake.
The whitewashed walls around us were covered with anatomical diagrams pinned alongside yellowing page fragments covered in writing that looked like Arabic. Below these were shelves full of test tubes and beakers, jury-rigged together with orange rubber hoses. Specimen jars filled the shelves to the brim, the one closest to me containing a pair of pale, dainty feet flaking apart in some clear fluid. Another held dozens of human eyeballs, bunched together like grapes.
Two metal tables, located roughly at the center of the room, stood behind West’s seat, their contents hidden by brown-stained sheets. Of all the things it could or should’ve smelled of, the room was filled with the stench of overdone bacon. Of course, I wasn’t alone with the good doctor. The one-legged padre and his big black friend were also present, blocking the only exit, standing guard like dead-eyed automatons. Whatever pretense of normality they’d had at the Mission was gone. I briefly wondered whether the winos were missing their soup.
As West had been watching me for some time, I decided to drop the act that I was still asleep and began to tug at my bonds. Naturally, my chair was bolted to the floor and the ropes were tied tighter than a mosquito’s ass. From the expression covering his nasty little face it looked like West was enjoying my predicament, so I stopped struggling and settled for just swearing my head off at him.
“You dirty little tow-headed cock gobbler,” was the best insult I could think of on the fly, before I started rambling on about his whore of a mother.
When I was finally good and hoarse, West cleared his throat and began reading from his clipboard.
“Mr. Trevor Towers” he said in a quiet, mellow tone, “ex-husband to Mrs. Jayne Towers... or should that be Mrs. Jayne Smith?” he grinned a mouthful of tiny white teeth at me, as I choked on my own bile.
“You’re nothing but a croaker, you creepy little toad.” I spat this out with more anger and venom than I’d used in a long while.
West finally rewarded me with a reaction, smacking me violently across the face with his clipboard. It was worth knowing I’d actually riled the little freak, even if it did cost me a loose tooth and a mouthful of blood.
“What else would you call a grave-robbin
g monster?” I sputtered through split lips, steeling myself for another clipboard slap. I was surprised when all he did was stand up from his chair. He then turned towards the metal bench before addressing me again.
“I can see how an illiterate snoop like you would think that, especially with his lost love involved.”
I took a slow deep breath at this attempt to rile me, staring daggers into his back as he reached over to retrieve a small metal case from the edge of the bench.
“Would you believe she was one of my greatest successes?” he said while removing a weathered hypo from the case, checking its needle in the light from the fixture above. “Far more successful than even these fine specimens,” he turned and indicated the two guarding the door, as expressionless and unmoving as when I’d first awoken. “They do as I say because they think I’m their god.”
I barked out a laugh, eliciting a grin from him as he continued.
“I brought her back to life and you think I’m a monster? She’s out of the dirt and under the sun thanks to me.”
Breaking off from my mental image of flicking his head off like a fly, I told him what I thought of his statement.
“You really are one delusional turd,” I sneered.
Leaving the bench to approach my chair, West halted just a foot away, rolling up his sleeve to reveal a pale skinny arm dotted with needle marks.
“I used to have to make my elixir of life in a test tube, you know.”
He jammed the needle into his arm, filling it with blood from one of his broken veins. The black color disgusted me: it flowed into the tube thicker than tar. West then withdrew the needle, waving it in my face. Pleased at the way I recoiled in disgust, he said, “But the times have changed and so have I.”
Crazy little Doctor West then spun round on his heels, his sleeve slipping down as he strode towards the metal bench. He tore away its brown burlap sheet with a theatrical flourish. What he revealed beneath that dirty sheet was a half-immolated corpse as black as an overdone sausage. At least I knew where the smell of smoked pork was coming from.
The worst thing though, was that from the burned features on the dead man’s face, it was obvious it was the guy I’d snuffed while searching for West. I felt like gagging when he reached over to touch the thing.
“You’re a war veteran, yes?” he said while picking up the dead man’s right arm, one-handedly testing the flexibility of the shriveled limb with the syringe still clasped in the other.
“You’ve done your homework, pecker-head,” I replied. I was starting to wonder how long he was planning to let the theatrics drag on.
“Well, I’m a war veteran too,” he said, “so I know what death means. I know that it is as unnatural and vile as what you did to this man here.”
The little croaker then jabbed the syringe into the corpse’s forearm, pressing down on the plunger till he’d emptied the filthy fluid into the cadaver.
“His name was Dan Kane by the way; a good assistant albeit with too delicate a stomach for our work. He ran away from me but I knew I’d get him back sooner or later. Before long, we’ll have our little reunion.”
I didn’t believe any of his crap-talk about resurrection, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try and escape his crazy clutches as soon as I was able. So when he began poking around the corpse’s chest with his stethoscope I used the distraction to try and free myself from the ropes around my wrists. It was while the doctor was looking for the corpse’s heartbeat that I found the small penknife tucked up beneath my watchstrap.
Not knowing or really caring how it’d got there I turned my gaze firmly from the gift horse’s mouth and quickly began negotiating the little knife into my fingers. With that accomplished, I went to work on the ropes binding my wrists.
7All Hell Breaks Loose
I knew I needed to get out of lookout duty and inside the lab, if Towers was to survive his meeting with West. My presence wouldn’t guarantee anything but I wasn’t going to sit idly by while West violated all laws of decency in his alleged pursuit of knowledge. If I had to get locked up again for that, then so be it.
Entering the house, I made my way upstairs and silently entered the lab. West and his associates had Towers restrained and a hideously charred figure was on the slab, with what I assumed was West’s other monster under its tarp nearby.
The stench of burnt meat permeated the room and I stifled a gag as West went about checking for the burned corpse’s heartbeat with his stethoscope.
“Guess you flunked cooking school too, huh?” I asked sarcastically.
“Barnes, you’re supposed to be outside!” West barked.
I smiled. “Had to take a leak.”
“And you couldn’t find a suitable spot outside?”
“Well,” I replied. “But that would be so uncivilized. Besides, no-one is interested in what’s going on in here.”
I saw Towers glaring at me and caught the flicker of recognition in his hate-filled eyes. “Hey, I know that bird,” I said. “In fact I owe him.”
Before West could respond, I walked over to Towers, bent over and backhanded him with a loud slap while mouthing the words, “I’m on your side.”
Towers responded to my slap by spitting in my face. I laughed and turned to West. “Somebody did a piss-poor job of tying him.”
West frowned at Father Murphy but before he could speak I said, “I’ll take care of it.”
Reaching behind Towers, I grabbed the penknife with which he’d been sawing at his bonds, the penknife I myself had hidden on him earlier, and began cutting through the rope while I pretended to tighten his restraints.
“There, West,” I said with satisfaction. “Even a pipsqueak like you should be able to handle him now.”
Then the charred corpse started screaming, a strangled, hoarse sound that had me and Towers sharing a horrified look. Then I yelled, “You damned maniac!”
“You’re not squeamish, are you?” West asked, before turning back to the reanimated corpse. “Let me remove what remains of his tongue.”
“I’m outta this madness,” I replied. “I’m going back outside.”
I walked toward the door, turned and pulled out the Browning I’d stashed away on my visit to Boston. “Time for your nightcap, you corpse-loving bastard!”
West leapt to the other side of the room. I would’ve nailed him easily if the esteemed Father Murphy hadn’t leapt faster than greased lightning and grabbed my arm as I pulled the trigger. My bullet missed its target but grazed the shoulder of Towers who let out a string of curses that would have impressed Satan himself.
“Son of a bitch!” I screamed, turning my weapon on Murphy. I fired three quick rounds into his chest and a fourth that took off the top of his head and sent him reeling against the wall, trailing gore in his wake. During this melee, West leaped back, reaching for his own gun. Losing his balance, he careened into the metal cylinder in which I had placed the little girl’s corpse. It crashed against the floor with a loud clang and the top went rolling across the room. To my horror, I saw the small corpse scuttle out of its container and make a beeline for West.
“Damn you, Barnes!” West railed, struggling to his feet. He finally managed to get a grip on his pistol and was proceeding to turn it on me when the reanimated child sank her unnaturally developed teeth into his thigh, causing him to drop the firearm.
West screamed again as the corpse child climbed up to his throat and tore at his jugular with a single bite. Blood sprayed all around as he struggled with his attacker. I was pleased to see Towers grab the fallen gun and then stunned as he aimed it at me!
“You ungrateful asshole!” I yelled.
Then Murphy’s hulking black companion finally entered the fray. He nearly ripped my arm off as he grabbed it and slung me across the room. Thank God for unintentional allies! Towers’ shot buried itself in the wall behind where my head had been moments earlier.
I somehow managed to hold on to my own weapon despite the force of the impact.
I struggled to gather my wits about me amid the gunfire, screaming and general confusion. I had only one chance to escape the carnage alive. I could only pray that Trevor Towers came to his senses and realized that we must join forces. It was a slim chance at best.
8Things Get Worse
I’d like to say I’d been in worse predicaments by that point, but that’d be a barefaced lie. I knew it, the screeching corpse I’d incinerated a few days earlier knew it, and the rest of the motley crew that had joined in on the bloody brawl probably knew it too. All except for the creepy little zombie creature chewing down on West’s throat; she was too intent on trying to tear the bastard’s head off to pay attention to anything else going on around her.
My mind shifted away from the carnage, to the familiar stink of gunpowder and the sounds of gunfire filling my ears. The only consolation was that the gun I’d nicked from West felt good in my hand. My shoulder hurt like hell from where West’s bozo, a man I recognized as an old ring partner, Riley Barnes, had shot me. Wait, was he on my side? He sure shot the priest quick enough. Who the hell cares?
So I did what I always do in that kind of situation: shoot first and ask questions later.
My first bullet missed Barnes as the black bastard crashed into him. After that beefy monster had tossed him like a rag doll and he’d disappeared behind a table I decided to try and peg West as he danced about with his tiny new friend digging into his throat. The problem was, him whirling like a crazy dervish and spraying that black shit he had for blood as he went, made him harder to hit than a camel in a sandstorm. I noticed briefly that West’s surviving guard was kneeling down beside Murphy and shaking him wildly, his huge dark shoulders sticking up like burial mounds. I hoped he wouldn’t be waking the Father up anytime soon, but with West around I wouldn’t bet on it. Thank God the ringing in my ears had dampened the noise the burned fella was making, still twisting and turning on the autopsy table.
As the jars of mysterious chemicals that’d been perched on the shelves were now smashed on the floor and mixed with West’s blood, securing good footing was becoming difficult. And just as I managed to get a bead on the doctor’s skinny chest I banged my knee on something hard and metallic and missed him by a mile. Instead of taking West down I only succeeded in blowing away the creature that would’ve killed him if I’d have left her to it. Now she was just a splattered memory on the lab wall.
Arkham Nights Page 3
