by Pete Kahle
This was a weird one, though. Flesh and blood, but no bones. I knew the kind of creatures that might have done this. And they knew me, and they didn’t like me. Too bad.
I went back to my doorway and tugged out my cell phone. I’m no big shot with technology – Ariadne, my occasional employer, told me to keep it on all the time. ‘It’s a mobile phone, not an immobile phone,’ she told me, with that angry look that makes me nod quietly and be a good boy.
I rang Rizzie Carter, my local Police Chief, and he bawled down the phone so loud I thought it would go into meltdown in my hand.
“For Chrissakes, Nick, I hope you’re not going to dump on me at this time of the day. I was just about to head for the homestead, buddy.” He was speaking through a mouthful of something, a fat burger most likely, so the words were distorted.
“Sorry to screw up the party, Chief, but I have a corpse sitting outside my office. Seems to be short of a bone or several dozen. I know nothing about it, other than that it’s wearing a scuffed pair of old brogues; ergo I take it to have been a man. Dressed like a tramp. A real mess. But I’ll do some investigating of my own. See if I can pick up a trail before it goes cold.” A trail? Who was I kidding?
“Okay,” he grunted, resigned to following up. He’d be here with a bunch of his terriers in no time, while I did my own digging. I knew he’d expect me to, given that this was a weird one. He always asked me to lend a hand with the weird ones. Nick Stone was done for the day and Nick Nightmare was about to emerge.
I thought about moseying on down to the Sleaze Sisters’ bar, where I could usually rely on someone to slip me a tip or two, but the truth is, Sal and I had pretty much split up after a slightly rumbustious relationship. We’d parted amicably, but she was a volatile lady and not averse to heaving furniture about when the mood took her. Right now I didn’t warm to the prospect of having a loaded ice box dumped in my lap, so I re-thought my next move. I decided I’d look up Craggy MacFury in the diner he ran. He had the longest ears in town.
The rain had eased by the time I got there, but the wind was cuffing me about viciously. I had to stuff my hat inside my coat and button it up tight. The diner, an elongated torpedo-shaped metal beast, was situated in a remote part of the city, and only a select few were ever able to find it. I know MacFury has some very strange friends, more than capable of putting some kind of hex on the diner to deflect unwelcome guests.
For once, the place was packed. There was some kind of Irish festival in full bloom, so the food was in plentiful supply, as was the booze. I was greeted cheerfully enough and for once I was surprised not to be cannoned off my feet by the host’s enormous wolfhound, the Hooligan. Perhaps he’d been confined to quarters because of the seething mob of celebrants. If a ruckus broke out, the Hooligan was likely to tear off a few heads, being an excitable beast.
“You’ll have to excuse the hullabaloo, Nick,” said MacFury, slapping me on the back with his great spade of a hand. “I’ve enough customers here to fill a dozen diners. Warming up for Samhain. Whether I’ve enough Guinness is another matter. Now – what’ll you be having?”
Usually even the very thought of eating in Craggy MacFury’s diner is enough to set me salivating – I cannot imagine food anywhere comparing to mine host’s fare, so I was powerless to refuse. After he’d brought me a potato pie, drenched in thick liver gravy, and I’d put worldly affairs aside and dived in, MacFury elbowed his way through the throngs and waved a bottle of his best wine at me.
“I dare not,” I grinned. “Work restrains me.”
“Ah,” he said knowingly. “You’ll be on a case then?”
“Yeah. You may be able to give me a lead. I’ve not seen Montifellini for a while and he’s always good for a tip off.” I was referring to another particular contact of mine, the driver of the most extraordinary bus in this or any other world, and a man whose knowledge of events outré was second to none.
“Oh yes. But he’s taken that bus of his off somewhere. Not seen him either. Even missed his Friday night feed, he did. So he must be on to something unusual, Nick. I can’t believe he’s in trouble, but I do know that something big is brewing. And I don’t mean the Festival. So what’s with you?”
I told him about the corpse in my alley. He listened intently, and then nodded.
“Now if that’s an ordinary boneless man, you’d be talking about any one of several night beasties that could have been responsible. But if it’s a Boneless Man, with capital letters, then that’s an entirely different kettle of fish.”
“Whoever dumped it in my alley,” I said, “meant me to find it. My guess is, it’s a baited trap.”
“Well, you’ll not want to go blundering into it. I know the very person you need to see, that I do. The Lady of the Stones.”
It was a new one on me, but MacFury’s reliability was pure pedigree. “Point me in her direction, if you will.”
“You’ll need to enlist the help of Caliban.”
Caliban? As in The Tempest? Really? He was kidding me. But, no, although MacFury had a sense of humour, in these situations he played it straight.
“Come with me,” he said and I got up and followed him. He shouted instructions to the staff he’d got in for the night and we went outside and round to the back of the diner, into a compound where, for some reason, the wind was held at bay. “I had a feeling you were coming tonight,” said MacFury. “And that we’d need Caliban. It’s why I had the Hooligan confined to his quarters. Oh, don’t mind him; he has a bone the size of a mammoth’s thigh to keep him happy. But the truth is, he and Caliban don’t get along. You’d not want to be witnessing World War Three, now would you?”
I was getting a mite clammy about meeting this Caliban character. Even more so when I saw what was in the middle of the compound. It was some kind of wooden structure, used for hanging meat, like maybe pheasants. MacFury could get such fare, whatever the season, but that wasn’t what he had in mind tonight. Instead he went to some kind of cold storeroom and emerged with two long strips of fish, which he hung up on the wooden tripod.
Then we waited. It only took a few minutes, but then the open gate opposite us, which framed a deep pool of darkness, seemed to blur like an image in water. Part of the darkness thickened and from out of it emerged the biggest cat I’d ever seen. I mean to say, domestic cat, although this was a stray, given its chipped ears, matted fur and decidedly wild look. The size of a small dog, it gazed at us with feral, yellow eyes, like it was studying an inferior breed, and then sauntered over to the hanging fish. It reached out lazily with one clawed paw and tore down the first strip, chewing it up and digesting it with worrying speed. The second piece went the same way.
“Caliban,” said MacFury, watching the huge black monster as it made a cursory effort to clean any remains of the fish from its claws. “Allow me to introduce Mr. Stone. He wishes to visit your mistress.”
The cat ignored him and yawned. It had more teeth than any normal cat had a right to possess.
“The Lady of the Stones is a fine lass, but I have to say a little eccentric. She’s not had a happy life. Her real name is Molly Malloy, but don’t be calling her that. You must address her as Scathach. And this is her familiar. She will know if the Boneless Men are active.”
Caliban at last deigned to look at me. He turned away and stood in the gateway, waiting for me. I thanked MacFury and followed the cat as it slunk up the alley. It was the beginning of a curious journey, like Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole. I’ve been to any number of bizarre rat-runs in this city, and I guess more than a few of them breach other worlds, so the labyrinth through which Caliban now took me was nothing new, despite its weirdness. It was like we were in a city that had died and fallen into a semi-ruined state. I clambered over torn fences and heaps of rubble.
I reached a small square, lit by one solitary bulb, like it was the last light in the city. The wind had died down and the rain had stopped, but it was cold in here, my breath a white cloud in front of me. For a
while I’d lost the cat until a movement up on a window ledge caught my attention.
There was a small figure up there, dangling its feet over the ledge. For a second I thought a gargoyle had cut loose from a local church, but even this squat, bulbous creature was more grotesque than any gargoyle I’d seen, with his bulging eyes and wide, flapping mouth. Instinctively I knew that it was Caliban, who’d changed shape. He grinned at me, but it was not a warming expression.
“You want to see Scathach, my mistress?” He had a voice that reminded me of claws being raked across a blackboard.
“Sure,” I said. “MacFury told me she might know about the Boneless Men.”
“Have you seen one?” His eyes were lidded, like a serpent’s, brimming with distrust.
“I think maybe I have.” I explained my dilemma.
He listened, nodding, then scampered off, still in the quasi-human form, apparently satisfied that I was not necessarily a mad assassin in search of his mistress with murder in my heart. For another half hour, deep into the night, I followed him until we came to an opening in one of the numerous alleys we’d taken. Beyond it was a wider area, which I could see at once was overgrown. Stones, rounded and sculpted, poked up from the thick grass. It was a cemetery. From the state of it, I could see it had long been abandoned. So the Lady of the Stones was, I guessed, the Lady of the Headstones.
The place was much bigger than I’d first thought and a mix of mist and darkness obscured its boundaries. After a lengthy hike through the grass, I saw a light up ahead. I could see some kind of mausoleum, partly collapsed so the front presented an opening, with a leaning stone roof. Underneath, in an impromptu cave, there was a fire glowing. No cauldron, but there was a skillet, metal legs astride the fire.
Caliban made himself comfortable on a fallen gravestone and a moment later the modern Hecate appeared. She kind of floated in, wearing a combination of silks and, well, more silks, some of which were scarves, and there were tiny bells on bangles. The most striking thing about her was her red hair, which had exploded around her so that she looked as if she’d just come from a Grateful Dead concert in their heyday. Not Hecate, then, more like Miranda, though I know that Shakespearian lady wasn’t a witch.
She made some curious gestures with her arms, her fingers curling and twisting like she was pulling something magical from the air. Who was I to say things were otherwise? She ended her little performance with a gesture for me to join her at the fire and like Caliban, I dropped on to a former gravestone.
“Nick Nightmare,” she said, in a cool, crystal voice. She had the greenest eyes I’d ever seen, even in this light. I put her age at anything between twenty and thirty, but heck, if she had magical powers, she could be a hundred and thirty. She had a kind of sadness about her, partly hidden under that dizzy air, which I guess could have been an affectation to hide what was really going on inside.
“Scathach,” I answered.
She bowed her head, apparently pleased that I’d addressed her the right way. “Warm yourself – have some food,” she said, indicating the skillet. Having already eaten at Craggy MacFury’s, I was going to decline, but I guessed it might upset her, so I took the dish she gave me and used a chunk of bread to mop up the thick, meaty stew. Now, that gave even MacFury a run for his money, and it went into my bloodstream like a mainline drug.
“I have been reading the night,” Scathach said, lifting a slender hand and sifting the air like she was again tugging secrets from it. “It tells me there is a cruel darkness gathering, preparing to unleash itself on this world.”
She had a curious accent, not quite Irish, and for sure her style of speaking was Old World, but it sort of fitted her appearance. She’d not have looked out of place on a stage, wafting to and fro, mesmerising her audience.
“I was told that you would know about the Boneless Men,” I said.
She shuddered. “Yes. They are moving at last. The Pumpkin King is cultivating an army of them, his purpose obvious. Conquest in the name of an even darker master.”
“The Pumpkin King?” It was a new one on me.
“He may have been human once, but the dark powers suborned him and, like so many, his greed thrust him deeper into their ways. A terrible intelligence festers in him, which is why he has become the ruler of the Boneless Men. Addicted to power, his hunger is insatiable. His dark masters know this and use it to manipulate him to their own ends. This world offers him everything his vile appetite craves. Already he has sent forerunners here. You have seen them?”
“A guy with no bones was dumped outside my office. The cops are dealing with the corpse.”
“They must burn it!” she said theatrically. “Burn it and all its seeds.”
“What did it want?”
“You, Nick Nightmare. Their master fears you and what you can do. You and your allies. Already you have thwarted his plans. He wants you destroyed. The Boneless Men slip from human body to body like parasites, discarding each body once it has served their purpose. The first was a warning – there is a second abroad.”
I was getting to feel even more uneasy. “Is it just me they want?” Don’t tell me they want Ariadne, too.
She looked directly at me, her expression clouded by a sudden thought. “All of you who defy their ruler. You fear for Miss Carnadine. There will also be a Boneless Man hunting her.”
I growled something crude. The idea that Ariadne Carnadine might be in the soup was like a kick in the guts. “You know where they are?”
“The first, yes. It extracted itself from that corpse you found and went back to its lair. It must be destroyed.”
“I’ll drink to that.” I stood up. “Just point me in the right direction.”
“You’ll need help,” she said, her expression suddenly hardening. “I know these creatures. Know them and abhor them.”
“No time like the present: let’s cut to the chase.”
She seemed happy enough to concur and picked something up - a long, steel object, and in the fire glow I could see it was a spear, or javelin. “This is the Gae Bolg,” she told me. “The spear of mortal pain, the death spear. It has been handed down my line across the generations since the first Scathach. Only I can use it. It is death to anyone else who touches it, but it will serve us well.” She turned to Caliban, who’d slid down from his perch, waiting, more dog than cat, for a command. At a gesture from his mistress, the familiar scampered off into the concealing grass.
We followed in silence. I wanted to ask her more about this Pumpkin King – I got a real feeling her own past was mixed up with this monster in some tortured way - but she’d withdrawn into herself, gliding like a wraith through the overgrown cemetery. I couldn’t see the stooped figure of Caliban – or the cat, if he’d changed back – but she probably had some kind of telepathic thing going with him. The mist thickened and we eventually left the cemetery by an overgrown path beside a stream and, for all I knew, we had crossed into some other realm. As long as my twin Berettas worked here, I was ready for anything, or so I told myself.
In time we got to another field, not a cemetery as far as I could tell, seeing as there were no obvious graves. More grass and weed, tangled shrubs, like somewhere long surrendered to nature. The air was very still, no storm here. Mist continued to swirl around, drifting up from the ground like steam from a sweating beast. Scathach pointed to a soft glow to our right. I could make out a couple of trees, bent over arthritically.
We approached slowly, stealthily, and I slipped out my two guns. Scathach shook her head, don’t go using them, was the message in her eyes.
There was a small clearing under the trees, a patch of ground that incongruously appeared to have been tilled, the soil raked, the weeds cut back from it. In the centre of this area was a large growth, which I guessed at first was some kind of big mutated cabbage. From the cover of the long grass, we watched as the leaves unfurled to reveal the dirty orange of a pumpkin. Only this was no ordinary pumpkin, I can tell you.
For
one thing, it had a face. Not some kid-carved Halloween face, but a contorted human face, bulging outwards, mouth open in a savage grin, more like a grimace. What made the whole thing really freaky was the fact that light shone from within the goddam thing, just like it does from a scooped out pumpkin with a candle inside it. When that bizarre head twisted from side to side, I dragged out one gun, regardless of Scathach’s views.
So this was the Boneless Man who had left that sack of flesh and blood in my alley. It had returned to its earth-based pit and now was again struggling to get up from the soil that nurtured it, like a vampire rising from its grave. Roots and leaves flew this way and that as the creature broke free of the ground. Scathach waited, the spear held at the ready, giving her the look of some manic harpooner. The pumpkin horror fixed its bright-eyed stare on me and lurched forward. Nothing subtle about its tactics.
Scathach chose her moment and launched the spear. It ripped into the gut of the Boneless Man and held firm, as if a dozen barbs had opened up inside it. The thing let out a scream like steam escaping from an engine and started to writhe frantically, this way and that. Light poured from its chest and belly, like the spear was turning it molten, until, with a noise like a huge sack of wet mud hitting concrete, the creature ruptured, bursting apart so we had to duck to avoid the flying vegetable mess.
Scathach quickly reached for the spear and used its now glowing end to burn up every last vestige of the former Boneless Man she could find. When she’d finished, she turned to me, a mite breathless, like she’d found the whole disgusting business kind of enjoyable. “Bullets will kill them, Mr Nightmare, but they won’t burn up the seeds.”
I nodded, checking to see that none of the gloop had splattered my coat. I didn’t relish the thought of being infected.
“Go to Miss Carnadine,” said Scathach. “She is safe for the time being. Caliban will take you back to your streets.”
