“To me, Abeor! Aberer! Chavajoth! Aid—give aid!” Again the great voice called upon his demon-gods.
A sudden shock made the room quiver. Dale saw that the fires grew pale. “Was I too soon? Too soon?” he asked himself in agony. “If the oil burns out before sundown—”
There was a crash. On every hand the solid ancient walls were riven. Up—up leaped the blue fiery pillars.
A shout of awful appeal. “Melek Taos! Master! Give aid!”
With almost blinded eyes, Dale saw Gunnar drop at Merle’s feet, saw in his stead a wolf-shape crouching, saw her stoop to it, kneel, kiss the great beast between the eyes, heard her clear, steady voice repeat the words of power, saw the flames sink and leap again.
The issue was joined. Now! Now! God or Demon! The Arab, devil-possessed, calling on his gods. Merle, fearless before the onrush of his malice. Hate, cruel as the grave. Love, stronger than death.
Dale’s breath tore him. Cold! Cold! Cold to the blood in his veins! God! it was upon her!
Gunnar stood in his own body, staring with wild eyes at the beast which brushed against his knee. He collapsed beside it, blind and deaf to further agony.
And still El Shabur’s will was undefeated. Still beside the unconscious Gunnar stood a wolf, its head flung up, its yellow lambent eyes fixed, remote, suffering.
Again Dale felt himself a tiny point of conscious life swung in the womb of time. Again the forces that bear up the earth, sun, moon, and stars were caught in chaos and destruction. Again he heard the roar of fire and flood and winds that drive the seas before them. Through all the tumult there rang a voice, rallying hell’s legions, waking old dark gods, calling from planet to planet, from star to star, calling for aid!
Dale knew himself on earth again. Stillness was about him. In a dim and dusty room he saw Merle and Gunnar, handfast, looking into each other’s eyes. About their feet a little trail of fire ran—blue as a border of gentian.
Another circle showed, its fires dead, black ash upon the dusty ground. Across it sprawled a body, its burnoose charred and smoldering. Servant of Melek Taos. Victim of his own dark spells. El Shabur destroyed by the demon that had tormented Gunnar. Driven forth, homeless, it returned to him who had created it.
EVIL FORCES, by Gary Lovisi
“When she told me to beware the evil forces, I just didn’t think much of it at the time. You know, Griff?”
I nodded. That was my partner, Fats, saying those words to me back in 1963, in a town I’ll call Bay City.
I’d never seen Fats so nervous. His big blubbery face full of sweat, his walrus-size body shivering and shaking like Jell-O with a bad attitude. I’d never seen him so affected, but then the recent killing had affected a lot of us. By the end of it all, it got a whole lot worse and damn near cost Fats his life.
* * * *
It began one rainy, cool morning. Fats’ nose was running like a faucet as he drove our old war-wagon Plymouth down Dumont Avenue. He ignored all the hustlers, pimps, grifters and hookers plying their trade boldly out in broad daylight. Like it was all so normal. If you knew Bay City back then, you’d know that wasn’t the half of it. We headed for Rosie’s Diner for some morning eats.
I said, “You know Fats, that’s pretty disgusting, rubbing your suit sleeve all over your wet slimy nose like that.”
He just burped, rubbed his nose again. I saw the sheen of mucous on his sleeve. He said, “I got a cold, Griff. The damn faucet won’t stop running.”
I nodded. It had been uncommonly cold lately, like almost a supernatural cold. An evil chill. I didn’t like that feeling at all, and when I looked over to Fats, I could see that he was thinking the exact same thing.
“Something’s up, Griff. Something bad.” He was driving slow, careful.
I shrugged, “Something’s always up in this town.”
We never got to Rosie’s. A call came over the box and we had the siren screaming and lights flashing as Fats gunned our Plymouth across town to an empty factory on the border of ‘the square mile of vice.’
The locals, mostly hookers sleeping off the previous night’s dating action, and winos and junkies on the nod, hardly noticed us as we pulled up to a deserted section of fence surrounding a run-down factory that hadn’t been open for business in years.
Our old friend Barney and his new partner were already there.
“Hey Griff, Hi, Mr. Stubbs,” Barney said welcoming us to his nightmare, “You ain’t gonna believe what we found! We got us another one!” He took us to the big double truck doors of the entrance.
Barney always called Fats Mr. Stubbs. I know he was intimidated by the Fatman. He wasn’t the only one. Half of Bay City was intimidated by Fats in our heyday, including brother cops and our bosses downtown. Even the mayor kept away from Sergeant Herman Stubbs. They’d had a history in the early days that had put the X on Fats, ruined his career and made a lifetime enemy of the powers-that-be. That’s why Fat’s partnered with me now. The word was out. No one would partner with him; it was a career killer for sure. My career was dead from other sources. So we just naturally gravitated to each other, partnered up, and somehow it all worked. We even had Captain Landis in our corner on occasion. He liked results. Fats and I got results.
I smiled at Fats. He looked all-serious, then took out a Hershey bar with almonds, unwrapped it with one hand and packed the entire chocolate glob into his huge gaping maw, then he took a deep drag from a Camel with the other hand.
Clouds of cigarette smoke and the smell of chocolate swarmed over me.
“Appears to be an interesting case,” Fats said.
“How can you tell?”
“I got the feel, Griff. Got the feel.”
I nodded and kept walking. I knew what he meant. Sometimes you just know. Then, as if to validate my thoughts, Barney spoke up nervously.
“Some weird stuff here, guys.”
“In what particular way?” Fats asked, burping loudly. Nothing was going to take him away from food when the eating mood was on him.
Barney’s gaze took in the huge abandoned factory. It had been a hanger-type building once. Dark, enormous, empty. But now not quite empty…
“Fats…” I whispered.
“I see it Griff.”
“A blood trail,” Barney said expressing our thoughts and trying to hide the terror in his voice. He slowly moved forward, Fats and I soon passed him up. “It’s up there. I ain’t never seen nothing like it before. It’s like one long…
“Smear… A giant smear of blood. We’re talking gallons, Griff. Starts here, runs over to…” Fats said, following it. I followed him, Barney took up the rear.
I took the lead now and walked on ahead, counting my paces, “Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, and it stops right here. Amount of blood indicates the body stopped here. Dragged itself, or was dragged here. That’s strange.”
“But where is it now, Griff?”
Barney said, “Ah, guys, if you don’t need me anymore is it okay if I go outside and have a smoke?”
Fats held out his pack of Camels.
I knew Barney did not smoke.
Barney took a butt out of Fat’s pack, gave the Fatman back the pack and left.
I smiled.
Fats just laughed to himself, then said, “Bulls! They all wanna be dicks, until they see the hard stuff.”
“Ah, Barney’s alright.” I said, looking over the crime scene again. Looking for the body and wondering where it could possibly be.
“Sure, Barney’s a peach, Griff, but this ain’t his style. This kinda sicko crap is more like…”
“…more like our style, Fats.” I finished, smiling.
Fats nodded, shaking his jowls, “Lotta blood, Griff. This fella—I assume it was a man—was literally tore apart. A bloody mess for sure. But interesting enough, if he wasn’t dragged—and I don’t think he was—he was sure as hell clawing the cement floor here to get away, or to stop being pulled… I wonder?”
We could see finger
nail marks through the muck of the floor.
“Trying to get away from the killer?” I said simply.
“Or something, scared the hell right out of him!”
I looked at his big, fat, sweaty face, “Or something? What you trying to say?”
“Something scared this guy right to hell and back. A guy cut to ribbons like that don’t lay down and die like a reasonable corpse but tries to get away with the last bit of strength in his body. What do you suppose scares someone like that, Griff?”
“I don’t know.”
I froze when I felt the drop on my cheek. I remember hoping it was a drop of rainwater from the leaky roof above—we’d had some rain lately. Fats looked at me and I watched his big sad face as I brought my finger to my cheek. When I brought it away, I saw blood. Then Fats and I both looked above our heads into the darkness of the metal rafters. There didn’t appear to be anything up there in the shadows, until we saw a dark blob wedged far above us. Another drop of blood dripped down on me.
“I think we found the stiff,” Fats said, being his usual wise-ass self.
“Yeah, now why don’t you be a good boy and find a ladder and bring him down?”
“Ah, Griff, you really gonna make me climb up there?”
I said nothing, just made the call for the meat wagon and for Doc, the medical examiner, to take a ride over while we tried to figure how the hell the stiff got up there. Who put him up there and why, for Christsakes?
“So what happened to him?” I asked Doc Carten after he’d had a look at the corpse. Fats stood by looking over the body, it was shredded with lacerations, a mass of dried bloody pulp on a gurney.
“Interesting,” Doc said re-examining the mess.
“Yeah, well, Doc, I’m sure it is, but you mind letting us in on it?” Fats bellowed. He was eating a large tuna hero. He’d forced me to stop off at Jackie’s on the ride back to get him something to tide him over until dinner.
“This corpse has had almost all the blood vacated from the system. There was an attack here so violent, so intense, so devastating, the body was literally torn to pieces. Almost shredded. No human could do such a thing. There’s something else, no human would be able to fling this mass of flesh so high into the rafters of the building. It was not placed up there, it was flung up there, blood spray indicates as much, but for the love of God I can’t see why.”
This wasn’t what I wanted to hear just.
Fats asked, “So Doc, then what kinda animal could do this?”
I was thinking lion, tiger, maybe King Kong?
Doc shook his head, said, “No animal did this either.”
Fats gave me a confused look, then said, “Doc, you’re not being real clear.”
“Doc,” I asked, “if the killer wasn’t human and it wasn’t some animal—where does that leave us? And how did the body get up there? What could be that strong?”
Old Doc didn’t say anything right off. He was examining, thinking, shaking his head. Looking nervous.
“Where does that leave us, Doc?” I repeated.
“Somewhere in between?” Fats offered.
I didn’t know what Fats meant by that comment but it didn’t do me much good when I saw Doc Carten reluctantly nod his head in agreement.
I said, “What the hell does that mean?”
Doc replied, “I don’t know how to say it, Griff. It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes real sense.”
Fats nodded, “Evil forces, Griff. That what you’re trying to say, Doc?”
Doc just shrugged, said, “Your guess is as good as mine Sergeant Stubbs.”
When we left I was more perplexed than ever.
“How do we explain this to Captain Landis? What do we say, our perp is neither human nor animal? What’s that mean, Fats, he’s a freakin plant! And a damn strong one, because whatever it is hurled a full grown corpse 35 feet into the rafters!”
“No, Griff, what it means is something in-between human and animal, like a…”
I looked at him then, getting more exasperated. “Like what, Fats?”
He didn’t say anything. Which was unusual for him. He clamed right up. Most uncommon if you knew the Fatman.
I mocked, “Fats? Oh Fats?”
“Yeah, Griff?”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
He didn’t say a word. I could hear the wheels turning in his head though.
I barked, “You fat bastard! You got a clue or some idea about this! I just know it! Come on now, give!”
“You’re not gonna like it, Griff.”
“I don’t like it already.”
Then he said it.
“Werewolf, Griff. I think we got us a werewolf killing.”
Well, with over five years to go before retirement, this murder was turning into one big stinker. I just hoped Fats hadn’t finally cracked.
“Werewolf?” I asked.
“Yeah, werewolf.”
“Fats, you’re a trained police professional. What would ever make you think that?”
“Evil forces, Griff. I can feel them. I see them in the lacerations on the corpse, like dozens of tiny knife marks but made by some type of claw. Not human. A werewolf hurled the body up in the rafters.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Look, I’m just saying, that’s what it looks like to me.”
“Okay, I got you now, so you’re not really going nuts. What you’re trying to tell me in your own crazy way is that we got some sicko pervert or mental case out there who thinks he’s a werewolf?”
Fats didn’t say one word. Not a good sign.
“So what exactly are you saying? I asked.
“Either we have a madman, Griff, or something much worse…”
“Worse?” I didn’t like that but I put it out of my mind for now, “So what do we do?”
“We begin with the evil forces. We go and talk to Zelda. She’ll tell you what she told me about what was happening.”
I shook my head but at least it was a place to start.
The Amazing Zelda had a place on Third Street off Dumont, right in the center of the Square Mile of Vice. She’d been a doll once, when she was young in the 20s, sexy flapper speakeasy dancer. Today, 40 years later she was rough. And tough. Former hooker and Madame, now doing the mind-reading fortune telling scam. From what I’d heard, Zelda had been doing well at it too. Like she knew certain things she shouldn’t have known. Or so some people said.
“I get feelings sometimes, Fats. You know what I mean?” Her wild eyes looked us over. There was something weird and mysterious about Zelda and I wasn’t so sure that it was all an act.
Fats didn’t know what she was talking about. He just said, “You mean like cravings?”
I laughed. Tried to compose myself. My partner, always thinking of food or sex.
“Detectives, we don’t have to play no games with each other. You know I’m running a good scam here. I admit it. I pay off and no one bothers me. But sometimes, it seems too good. It scares me. I’m thinking of quitting, doing something else. I was telling that to Fats the other day.”
“Zelda, tell me about the evil forces.”
“They’re everywhere, Griff. All around you. All around me, swirling around Fats. Hungry. Bloody. Ready and waiting.”
Fats looked like he was getting the creeps.
I figured Zelda was certifiable but said, “Ready and waiting for what, Zelda?”
“To do stuff, to do evil. They scare me. I can see them sometimes. I see their forms, not their human ones, but their otherworldly ones. The ugliness is indescribable. There’s one I’ve been seeing too much lately, in my dreams, now even in my waking hours. Dark fur, growling, bloody fangs and mouth, claws, wolfish…”
Fats looked at me nervously.
“Like a werewolf?” I asked.
Zelda just froze. Silent. “I can feel it, Griff, it’s here!”
“Here? Now?” Fats pulled his gun.
“In Bay City, I mean,
” she continued, eyes glassy, her skin suddenly turned ashen. She was a good actress, I’ll give her that. She was even spooking me.
“Zelda?” I asked.
She froze, her eyes growing larger like terrified yellow disks in her head, her face twisting in fear, then terror. She opened her mouth to scream but not a sound came out. She was frozen in total terror.
Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen whether it was an act or not.
Fats slapped her face. “Come out of it, Zelda!”
Zelda crumpled to the floor.
She didn’t move. She was quiet, pale. It took me a minute to realize she wasn’t breathing.
I checked her out. She was an excellent actress and scam artist.
I looked up at my partner, took a deep breath and said, “Fats, she’s dead.”
Fats shook his head in disbelief; “I didn’t slap her that hard, Griff.”
I nodded. I knew Fats’ slap hadn’t killed Zelda. Fear had killed Zelda. Sheer stark fear.
“She’d seen something, Griff. Somehow she picked up on the werewolf and that means something,” Fats said. “I’ll make the call, why don’t you check out her place.”
I took a blanket off the couch and covered Zelda’s body. It was disturbing looking at her face, at those bulging eyes. It was like she was still looking, still seeing and connected to what, I wondered. For sure it was something that had truly terrified her, her old heart had just given out. Maybe the same thing that had tortured that unidentified body in the warehouse? I wondered. It gave me the creeps.
Doc Carten called us with an ID and time of death on the warehouse victim, “Ronald Meyer, male, white, about 25 years old. We got a partial print…of something. Doesn’t seem human, I’ll have to do some tests. Thought you’d want to know, seeing as he’s the son of the most important man in Bay City and an escapee from a mental institution.”
I told Fats.
“We’re in a real mess now.”
Captain Landis called soon after. We expected it. He said, “Look guys, they want this cleared up. Yesterday!”
The Werewolf Megapack Page 65
