by Alan K Baker
‘Pretty much,’ Fort nodded. ‘Æther scanners don’t lie. If those zombies had been created with Enochian Magick, which Capone favours, the psychic residue would have shown up in the readings.’
‘So the likeliest explanation remains that Sanguine was responsible for the theft of the Martian Falcon.’
‘Yeah, but that doesn’t explain why Sanguine was offed.’
‘Some internal problem in his gang?’ suggested Lovecraft.
Fort shook his head. ‘Pretty unlikely. Sanguine was by far the most powerful amongst his bunch. None of them would have had the moxie to go up against him, even if they’d wanted to.’
‘Then surely Capone must be behind it.’
‘That doesn’t make sense, either,’ said Fort. ‘Or rather, it would have made sense if he hadn’t brought me in. I mean, why do so if he intended to off Sanguine all along?’
‘Perhaps he changed his mind after speaking with you.’
‘No,’ said Fort. ‘He wouldn’t have changed his plan so quickly. Something else is going on, Howard. There’s a big piece of the picture which we’re not seeing.’
‘You think someone else is involved in this affair? Someone whose identity is unknown to us?’
‘Yeah,’ said Fort miserably. ‘That’s what I think.’
CHAPTER 9
Father O’Blivion
The Visitation Rectory stood on Richards Street, in the Red Hook district of Brooklyn, an oasis of light in a desert of iniquity – at least that was how Father Cormack O’Malley saw it. He thought of all the Catholic churches in New York that way, and to him it was far more than a metaphor. His ancestors had lived in the wild countryside of County Cork, in the far south of Ireland, and the echoes of that hard and simple life rang through him with every beat of his heart.
As he descended the stone steps from the Rectory’s front door to the street, O’Malley glanced up at the huge bulk of a skycrawler that had just heaved itself into the air from the docks in Gowanus Bay to the south. Like a fat, misshapen insect, the giant aircraft lumbered through the sky, its Cavorite-coated outer skin glowing an unpleasant and unnatural shade of green even in the bright sunlight of midday. O’Malley shook his head and cursed it silently.
He mistrusted the strange science that had spawned machines like the skycrawler and raised cities like New York upon the face of God’s Earth; that mistrust was vindicated in the misery, greed and vice he saw in the faces of its inhabitants every day. To probe the mysteries of the universe was to bang unceremoniously on the gates to God’s Kingdom, and the towers of concrete, steel and glass which rose around him were as Towers of Babel striving insolently to reach a Heaven in which they had no place. The price of this temporal impertinence was the spiritual squalor that afflicted the city, weighing down the human soul and sullying it with the dark stain of so-called ‘progress’.
It was a squalor he had watched infect the heart of more than one young priest, whose mind and soul had yet to be tempered in this unholy forge, which was why he made a point of visiting each new arrival in the city. These visits gave him an opportunity to see how they were settling in, to listen to their hopes and fears, and to gauge their strengths and weaknesses. It was important work – at least as important as ministering to the spiritual needs of his flock – and Father O’Malley was nothing if not mindful of his responsibilities.
He had grave concerns about the young priest, Father Desmond Maguire, whom he had just left. The lad was barely out of the seminary, and here he was already in the panting maw of New York, with a head full of dreams about offering salvation to the heaving, self-obsessed masses. Optimism and high ideals were fine – essential, in fact – but the greatest test for a man of God was how he handled the situations in which those ideals seemed doomed to failure and irrelevance.
When that happened (and he believed it was when, not if) he would see the real Desmond Maguire.
As he walked along Richards Street toward the Columbia Street upway station, O’Malley became aware that he was being followed. A glance in the wing mirror of a parked car told him that there were two of them: rough-looking types, unshaven and shabbily-dressed, a pair of street hoodlums, the dregs of humanity drifting along the street the way excrement drifts along a sewer pipe.
Forgive me, Father, O’Malley thought. I know I should not consider them that way. They are your errant children, as are we all…
‘Hey, Father!’ called one of the men.
O’Malley stopped and turned to face them. ‘Yes, my son?’
‘Me and my buddy, we got a question for you.’
‘And what is your question?’ O’Malley asked.
The other man grinned at him. ‘How much you got in your wallet?’
Suddenly, they lunged at him, sweeping him off the street and into a narrow alley filled with stinking garbage. They thrust him against a wall, and while one held O’Malley’s throat in an iron-fast grip, the other started to search his pockets. He could smell their whisky-tainted breath, the stink from their unwashed bodies, and he pitied them.
‘Where’s your fuckin’ wallet, Father, huh?’ said one.
‘Hurry it up!’ said the one who was holding O’Malley by the throat.
‘I have little money,’ said O’Malley, struggling to get the words out past the hoodlum’s grip.
One of the men found what he was looking for in the back pocket of O’Malley’s pants. He held up the wallet for his friend to see, and then grinned at the priest. ‘See, Father?’ he said. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’
The one who was holding O’Malley drew back his arm, made a fist and said: ‘Lights out, Father.’
O’Malley smiled at him and brought his knee up sharply, directly into the man’s crotch. The man gasped and dropped instantly to his knees, while O’Malley whipped his elbow around and struck the other hoodlum square in the face, flattening his nose with a crunch like that of walnut shells crushed underfoot. O’Malley then launched himself from the wall against which he had been pinned and aimed a powerful uppercut to the man’s solar plexus which lifted him clean off his feet. He dropped like a sack of potatoes and writhed on the filthy ground.
‘Do you still think that wasn’t so hard?’ said the priest.
‘Son of a bitch!’ gasped the other man, who was still holding his genitals, his eyes tightly shut. ‘You fuckin’ bastard!’
‘Your profanity is an insult to God!’ shouted O’Malley as he leaned forward, grabbed a handful of the man’s hair and yanked up his head. ‘As is your very life!’
He punched the man three times, shattering his jaw and knocking out several of his teeth.
‘What the fuck you doin’?’ gasped the other hoodlum, who had managed to get some of his breath back.
O’Malley glanced at him. He was still holding his ruined nose with one hand, blood flowing from between his fingers. ‘You’re a fuckin’ priest!’
O’Malley released his grip, and the man fell face forward and lay still. He approached the other hoodlum, who crawled towards the wall.
‘And because I’m a priest, you thought me easy game. How many others have you thought that about, you and your buddy? How many others have you dragged into alleys like this, and robbed and beaten?’ O’Malley picked up his wallet, returned it to his pocket and crouched down beside the cowering man. ‘How many?’
‘None, Father, none, honest!’
‘You’re a lying little bastard.’
‘It ain’t no lie, I swear to you.’
‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’
‘No… why should I?’
O’Malley stood up and thrust out his foot, pinning the hoodlum’s head to the wall. The man moaned in pain and terror.
‘I am Father Cormack O’Malley.’
‘Oh Christ!’ said the man through gritted teeth. ‘Father O’Blivion!’
‘That’s me.’ O’Malley gave a mirthless grin. ‘And don’t take your Saviour’s name in vain, nor call on Him for protection, for he has already sent me to save you. You and your buddy are going to change your ways. From this moment on, you will turn away from the path of evil.’
‘Yes,’ whispered the hoodlum.
‘From this moment on, you will forsake your wickedness and turn toward the light that God in His infinite wisdom and mercy has shown you.’
‘Yes, we will, honest!’
‘Through your actions from this moment forward, you will bare your souls to God, and through those actions, and the repentance they represent, will your souls be cleansed of the filth which sullies them.’
With difficulty, for O’Malley’s shoe was still planted firmly against the side of his head, the man nodded.
‘Do you think that your soul is yours to do with as you see fit?’
‘I… I dunno,’ said the hoodlum.
O’Malley pressed harder against his head.
‘Aahh! No! No! I don’t think so! I don’t think so!’
‘And well you should not, for your soul belongs to God, and every wicked act you perform is an insult to Him who endowed you with it. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Father,’ the man whimpered. ‘I understand.’
‘I’ll be watching you,’ said O’Malley. ‘Don’t think I won’t. And if you stray once from this new path, so help me, I will cut you down myself and send your souls to Him for judgment! Do you understand?’
The hoodlum began to weep. ‘Yes, Father.’
Father Cormack O’Malley gazed down at the man, and smiled. ‘If you’re smart, my son, those are the last tears you will ever cry.’
He was about to turn away and leave the alley, when a movement in its shadowed depths caught his attention.
He stepped away from the hoodlum. ‘Who’s there?’ he called out. ‘Come on now, show yourself!’
From out of the shadows, a tall figure approached, making no sound as it glided along the garbage-strewn ground. It was dressed in a suit of alabaster-white, and was surrounded by a pale, subtle radiance.
O’Malley recognised the figure long before it finally drew up to him. He turned to the hoodlums and said: ‘Get going, you lads.’
The hoodlums didn’t need to be told twice. They dragged themselves to their feet and fled the alley.
O’Malley returned his attention to the figure dressed in white. ‘I thought you were dead,’ he said.
‘You sound disappointed,’ said the figure.
‘I am. I thought the world had finally been rid of your vileness.’
‘That hurts, Father.’
‘I doubt it,’ O’Malley said. ‘What do you want?’
‘I need your help.’
‘Don’t make me laugh!’
‘It’s true,’ said the figure. ‘And you’re quite right: I am dead. I have passed through the final death. But I still need your help.’
O’Malley smiled a smile that was more a grimace. ‘All right then, I’ll play along. What can a humble priest do to help the ghost of Johnny Sanguine?’
CHAPTER 10
No Rest for the Wicked
‘I’m not a vampire anymore, Father,’ said Johnny Sanguine.
‘What are you, then?’ asked O’Malley, putting his hand in his pocket.
‘Just your average ghost,’ Sanguine replied, glancing down at O’Malley’s pocket with a half-smile.
‘What do you want?’
‘Like I said, I need your help.’
By way of response, O’Malley suddenly withdrew a silver crucifix and thrust it toward Sanguine.
The ghost’s smile grew broader. ‘That never bothered me before… why should it now?’
O’Malley glanced at the crucifix and put it away. ‘I thought you might have become transformed into something worse than a vampire.’
‘Transformed…’ said Sanguine, a slight frown clouding his pale features. ‘An interesting choice of words.’
O’Malley sighed. ‘I’m busy, Sanguine.’
‘Yes, I noticed. Busy cleaning up the streets, sweeping up stray souls and pointing them in the right direction, which is up rather than down, right?’
‘That’s my mission, my calling.’
‘Your mission! Your calling!’ Sanguine snorted. ‘Sisyphus! One day the boulder’s going to come crashing down on you, crushing you like a stray dog under the wheels of a car.’
‘I’m ready for whatever fate God has planned for me,’ said O’Malley in a level voice. ‘And since you claim to need my help, I wouldn’t go running off at the mouth like that.’
Sanguine nodded. ‘You’re right – although it’s not just me you’ll be helping.’
‘You’re talking in riddles. Get on with it or be on your way!’
‘All right, Father,’ said Sanguine, raising his hands in a placatory gesture. ‘I was killed yesterday afternoon… staked.’
‘Who was responsible? Capone?’
Sanguine laughed. ‘No, not Capone.’
‘Surprising. I’d have thought he’d be the only one with enough balls to go up against you.’
‘You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you? But it wasn’t him.’
‘Who, then?’
‘Rusty Links.’
O’Malley’s eyes widened. ‘Your girl?’
‘My girl.’
‘Why did she do it?’
‘She was acting on someone else’s behalf.’
‘How do you know?’
‘She told me… as I was dying.’
‘Whoever he is, I’d like to shake his hand.’
‘Believe me, Father, you wouldn’t.’
‘Why not? Who is it?’
‘Crystalman,’ replied Sanguine.
‘She told you that?’
‘No, but I’m dead, and the dead know a great many things that the living don’t.’
O’Malley said nothing. His face became set in a grim mask.
‘And that’s not all,’ continued Sanguine. ‘Rusty Links is not human. She’s a shapeshifter…’
‘The devil you say!’
‘Another interesting choice of words, considering the form she took when she staked me.’
‘Why did she do it? Or maybe I should ask why Crystalman told her to do it?’
‘I was responsible for stealing the Martian Falcon…’
‘You?’
‘Yes. I used zombies for the heist, so suspicion would fall on Capone. But Rusty stole it from me. The last thing she said to me was that someone else needs it – someone much more important than me.’
‘And you know for a fact that that someone is Crystalman.’
Sanguine nodded.
‘Why does he want the Falcon?’
‘Because of what it contains.’
‘And what does it contain?’
The smile that had been playing upon Sanguine’s lips faded. ‘The Falcon must be retrieved from Crystalman and returned to Mars,’ he said.
‘What?’ cried O’Malley. ‘What the hell are you talking about, Sanguine?’
‘It’s true, Father.’
‘I’ll tell you what’s true, lad: you always were a gobshite, and you always will be!’
‘It’s true,’ Sanguine repeated.
‘And how, precisely, is that to be achieved? Assuming Crystalman is kind enough to give it back, are we to sprout wings and fly to Mars?’
‘The NCPE is building the X-M 2 right now. They’ll soon be ready to launch the next expedition. When that ship blasts off, the Martian Falcon must be aboard.’
‘Why?’ said O’Malley, taking a step forward. ‘You didn’t answer my question just then. What does the Martian Falcon contain that’s so important to Crystalman?’
&n
bsp; ‘Something terrible,’ said Sanguine.
‘Ah, bullshit! Feckin’ bullshit, lad! It’s just a statue – priceless, yes, but just a statue.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because the Primal Mind told me.’
‘The what?’
‘The Primal Mind of the Universe: the intelligence which you call God.’
‘Oh!’ said O’Malley, folding his arms and regarding the ghost of Johnny Sanguine with undisguised contempt. ‘So God told you to come here and waste my time, did He?’
‘That’s right, Father. You must understand that what I was before, I am not now. When Rusty Links staked me, when my body collapsed into ash, my soul was freed… but my soul is still tainted with all the evil I have committed throughout my un-life. And when the Primal Mind appeared to me, I cowered before it, fully expecting to be punished. But that didn’t happen, for the Primal Mind is wise and compassionate beyond the comprehension of humanity. It offered me the chance to redeem myself, to rescue my own soul from the punishment that awaits it.’
‘And that chance involves returning the Falcon to Mars,’ said O’Malley.
‘It’s my only opportunity for redemption, Father, the only way I’ll be able to find peace. I don’t want to think about the alternative.’
‘And you want my help.’
Sanguine nodded.
‘Why should I, after all the evil you’ve done?’
‘You know the answer to that question,’ said Sanguine. ‘It’s your duty as a man of God to help souls to find redemption.’
‘You always were a liar, Johnny,’ said O’Malley with a shake of his head. ‘How do I know you’re not lying now?’
‘What reason would I have to lie to you, Father? I’m already dead and finished. My time on Earth is at an end; all I have left now is the chance to perform a service which will allow me to pass fully from this world into the realm of the Primal Mind.’
‘You mean Heaven?’
‘If you want to call it that…’
‘Heaven… you… the Vampire King of Brooklyn, who has caused more mischief and suffering than anyone else in this city, save Capone himself!’
