Spectacular Moments of Wonder with Dr. Monocle: That Certain Gentleman

by John Theesfeld

  "Where did it go wrong?" The Judge asked, I imagine in his slow drawl. "Tell me, Mr. Brisk, where did this go wrong? I thought we had a good relationship, son... I thought, possibly incorrectly as it may be, you could get things done."

  "Look at me nose, The Strongman jumped me-" Mr. Brisk attempted, but was cut short.

  "I don't give a good plucked munchkin how you failed or why you failed. Point is, son, you failed. Plain and simple. Plain as the nose on my face, as simple as the brain in your head. You’re here standing empty-handed, son. Empty-handed and broken-nosed like the feeble-minded, incompetent piece of dwellar dung you are."

  From the notes, there was an awkward silence.

  The Judge finally finished, "See... You had your chance. You had your chance." The Judge lit his cigar, plumes of smoke rose above his head and slowly filled the room. (Or as the secretary put it: May pass out, air terribly polluted. Note to self: Find a fresher brand of cigars.)

  "These three idiots..." He motioned his cigar at them before putting it back in the corner of his mouth, "You find them to be valuable to you, son?"

  "Judge?" Mr. Brisk didn't understand.

  "Are these men of worth to you, Mr. Brisk? Do you find they make your job easier?" Judge Huppard leaned back in his chair, his round gut protruding grotesquely outwards, the buttons on his shirt stressing and the shirt tensing and stretching.

  Mr. Brisk replied in a confused manner, "Yeah, I guess, they're a pretty good crew, I suppose..."

  "They're mine, now." The Judge re-lit his cigar.

  Mr. Brisk stepped forward and pounded his fist on the desk, "Listen, Judge, you don't own me, remember? You ain't got no right takin' my men away from me." Mr. Brisk leaned in and looked down on Judge Huppard. His nostrils flared, his breathing quickly paced. It wasn't so much losing his men to The Judge, by my conjecture. I believe what got to him was being belittled in front of his gang. Really, for the right price, they would most certainly be available for hire, so I don't understand why he would get so worked up, but I suppose that's what a lot of these big fellows do... Ah, tangent, how you make us chase thee.

  From his chair, The Judge leaned right back into Mr. Brisk, "Listen, boy, you puff out your chest, you get angry, you do what you have do to make you feel better, but it don't scare me, it's just not gonna work. Know why?" The Judge then pulled a hand canon from beneath his desk, aimed at one of the three thugs and pulled the trigger. The thug flew backwards in the air and down to the ground dead. His lights extinguished to make a point, The Judge was above the law and could do whatever he wanted and get away with it. Very unsettling and sickening, if I do say so.

  "Now, I could do the same to the other two," The Judge continued, the two thugs trying to hide in an open office, "or you can just hand them over. It's punishment time, son, so be glad I'm just giving you choices."

  Mr. Brisk grabbed the hand canon from The Judge, cocked the hammer, spun around and killed his own men, a shot each to the chest. He then turned back to The Judge, dropped the firearm on the desk and started to walk out. His last remark was, "Fine, they're all yours." And he closed the door behind him.

  The Judge was said to be left with a grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye. I tell you, the man was as joyful as a massacre.

  25

  In the distance sounded a clunkity engine, barely hanging on. Sounds of popping and sputtering punctuated the uneven noise. I peered out across the vast graveyard, The Strongman at my side, as I held my umbrella above his head. He seemed better now; sitting in the wet grass, twirling a small daisy between his fingers.

  As the sound became more pronounced, my eye caught the sight of black smoke in the distance, looking like it had trailed on for some ways and it was coming closer. Even against the gray sky, the black smoke was thick enough to contrast against the ceiling of clouds ever so. It was thick enough to choke the eyes.

  The Strongman twirled the flower between his fingertips, sitting there at my feet, dazing off. The sound catching his ear, he looked up in the direction of the smoke. The smoke was rising, billowing, collecting low and densely in the sky.

  "What is that?" The Strongman spoke quietly.

  We could make out a figure, a large figure just coming down the horizon. The sound was that of an engine. The engine sputtered and cranked along spewing soot into the sky. The overcast and muggy weather we were already experiencing had begun to build to a severe state. And the figure grew in detail: An oddly shaped man, tall and barrel-chested, skinny legs mechanized with support braces. Most noticeably was his top hat, nearly comically tall in proportions, and pieced to the strange contraption he was wearing on his back. It was obviously constructed of metal. As he moved closer, his barrel chest proved to be almost just that, a barrel. He was constructed of and around a very large wooden barrel. His back seemed to be all engine. This gentleman was mechanized, but for what I could not understand.

  The man beneath that monstrosity must be a massive fellow, I remember thinking. The enormity and mass of the contraption was overwhelming. The clockwork automatonic mechanisms jutting from within outwards were strange to the eye.

  The man's backpack engine spewed and spit fumes and smoke and steam and just awful pollution into the air and the sky grew darker and thick with pending doom. A haze crept up all about. It all somehow stayed localized and near. Hauntingly, it seemed to obey in such an eerily calm manner. What controlled this force?

  "Shall we inquire if this man needs direction?" I asked as The Strongman stood up.

  "Maybe he's breaking down?" The Strongman suggested.

  We weaved through headstones and statues making our way towards the man. I could see now his face was black, caked with soot, his teeth all silver and gold and a few wooden ones for good measure. He smiled a lot. Laughing it seemed. His dental work was something else, almost as interesting as the clockwork bits and pieces of his polluting contraption. His eyes were hidden behind large goggles strapped around his head. The lenses were black as crude.

  His heavily muscular arms pulled levers and worked cranks built within and throughout the barrel. He stopped thirty paces away from us. Beneath the slight chugging of the engine we could hear him giggling maniacally. He was attempting to stifle and contain his laughter. It seemed all the more deranged. Was he a gaster? No, certainly not. His apparatus was far too involved. As his giggling died down, he began furiously cranking away at a valve on his side, a rush of water or some liquid could be heard. He frantically pulled levers and wound gears and pressed buttons, all the while his giggle grew into a psychotic laugh. The plumes of smoke were dense clouds of black. I could hear and feel the rumbling of thunder within, just ever so faintly.

  We paused in our tracks as the rain and wind began to pick up drastically.

  "What's he doin', Doc?" The Strongman wouldn't take his stare from the engine man, the pollution man, The Weather Man.

  "I can't be certain," I was dumbfounded, not what I had expected to find in a graveyard.

  More and more exhaust filled the air darkening the sky. The rain picked up further, the wind blew in from the north, and I could begin to feel the ground beneath my feet become just saturated, like a sponge at its peak productivity. The wind grew violent and thunder clapped about our heads. The effect was disorienting.

  "We should get going, Doc, before the train leaves." The Strongman, I could tell, was growing uneasy with the situation. To be honest, I felt we had over-stayed our welcome entirely and should be leaving promptly.

  We both turned to see the train headed off into the distance, as it were. I checked my pocket watch and gave it a tap with my finger before putting it away. A flash of lightning illuminated everything for but a brief moment. And the rain grew heavy, like small pebbles being pelted at us from above. I opened my umbrella but it was barely of any use.

  The ground turned quickly to mud. And then the oddest of things happened, the ground just below The Strongman gave way to his weight and his left leg plummeted into the soggy,
wet ground.

  Instinctively, I went to help him up, but it would have been easier lifting a boulder chained to bedrock. He easily pulled himself from the grave. He wiped the mud from his pants. The wind kicked up and I could feel it upon all sides of me. The aether was whipping around us like a merry-go-round gone wrong. I refastened my umbrella as it was of little use with the wind as violent as it was.

  And then things grew increasingly weird. Arms. Decaying, gray, rotting arms reached up from the hole The Strongman created, and the corpse pulled itself from the grave, up The Strongman's leg and onto his back where the rotting man attacked him about the head. The Strongman defended himself just fine, a rotting corpse being no match for a circus strongman. The Strongman could bend iron bars around in curled swirls; tearing a rotting corpse in half wasn’t much of a challenge.

  And then, all around us, more started clawing their way to the surface through the watery, muddy ground. The thunder kept periodically sounding from the sky above. The Weather Man continued working his machine suit.

  I believe one Admiral Elliot Admiral, and none other than, had once regaled me of stories of the dead rising and attacking the living. He was deep within Southland seeing that several tribes be tended to after fierce storms devastated their land and homes. A tribal shaman warned him of the undead, those resurrected from the eternal black to create more undead. But how was this? Here at the graveyard, how was this happening? The Engine Man? The Pollution Man? The Weather Man? And now, The Resurrection Man? By whichever name, he was a true mystery.

  The wind picked up into a riot and another undead being attacked The Strongman. He threw the corpse into the wind and was taken along for the ride. I batted away undead after undead with my umbrella. They seemed more of a nuisance than a threat. Some would crumble upon being hit with the umbrella, others needed to take a fair beating.

  The chugging machine spewed more and more blackness into the air. The smoke swarmed and swirled with the clouds in sky. He then sputtered black liquid, sprayed in spurts of black mist. I can’t be certain that the black rain that followed was directly resulting from the black mist, but the rain did come down black and dirty. It felt like rain and was certainly wet like water. The only leering oddity being that the rain was pure blackness. It didn’t seemed to stain our clothing, but we could see in each others faces the black streams of water running down our skin.

  This sort of paraphenomenon was quite rare. Weather manipulation and resurrection of the dead was strange to see at all and unheard of to see together.

  While I’m not entirely certain there’s a correlation between the black rain and what happened next, I can say that it is at least one damned hell of a coincidence. Random graves surrounding us started sprouting their contents. It wasn’t all or nearly most, but enough to be concerned about. Fighting off a few undead is an easy enough task, cathartic at times, even. This black rain, though, was making me nervous for it was sprouting and giving way to more undead than I would have liked to fend off with or without The Strongman’s assistance.

  I was doing fairly well until the wind grew strong enough to pull me up into the air. A whirlwind was developing all around us. A radius of inescapable bounds. And then? We became completely aetherbourne.

  What did that man have? How was this happening? Nothing made sense. Everything swirled within my head like a thick stew. I couldn't understand anything that was going on. Where was this, inside of a dream or were we truly inside the whirling wind of a tornado in the sky? Here I was, floating. My top hat began lifting from my head before I slapped it back on tight. I could see The Strongman below me, tearing corpses in half as we all swirled around the delicately violent vortex of black clouds.

  They began descending on me in no time, flying through the air from all directions. I dodged a few broken headstones and patches of grassy mounds torn from the graveyard grounds. With The Strongman several feet below me and preoccupied with keeping himself alive, I had to fend for myself. Instinct and training immediately kicks in, even at my ripe old age. I unsheathed the blade from my umbrella. In one hand, a fine steel Eastern Bay blade. In the other, the rest of the umbrella, the blade’s sheath, which I could use as a billy club or baton.

  The first upon me was an undead Royal Huntsman, in his full officer’s uniform. He was somehow reanimated. He was mostly skeletal remains and uniform, but he came lunging for me. He had a great power and strength behind him.

  Brandishing my weapon, as weightless in my hand as if I held but a quill (although, I must say, a quill can be mighty deadlier), I swiped the blade across the chest of the undead soldier slicing him in half, the wind taking him in two different directions.

  I grew comfortable in this state of violent limbo. Twisting and turning with the ebb and flow of the wind, I effortlessly slid through the air waving my sword like a conductor's baton. The wind keeping me aloft eased my old bones. I could bounce myself from floating headstones.

  The Strongman used one undead fellow to beat another with. They were beginning to gain on him rather quickly. I supposed his weight kept him lower than I inside the vortex. I pushed myself from a gravestone down towards him, slicing through several undead entities.

  Just as we began to think we were making progress, the situation grew worse. The vortex began to move along the ground. As it did, it began pulling up more bodies into the whirlwind. The faster and further it traveled, the more undead it created.

  I could see The Strongman had taken a piece of headstone and put it to use by clobbering the undead, one after the other. I sliced away like I was clearing a path through the jungle. Instead of branches, leaves and vines, it was limbs.

  The vortex picked up speed, the centrifugal forces were getting the best of my muscles. The Strongman held on for little longer before he became overpowered. And when the tension built to a snapping point, the walls of the tornado began to open. Blinded by light streaming in through the broken black walls, I couldn't exactly tell how far up we were. Light flooded the vortex and the spin weakened.

  When I finally regained my sight, I could confirm what my body was telling me, that I was indeed flying through the air having been ejected from the violent winds. We were pushed far from the cemetery. We had moved beyond the hills into neighboring valley. I remember landing in tall grasses, bouncing and skidding to a stop. My landing was soft, but it still bloody well hurt.

  There I took a moment to catch my breath. I had movement of everything from my toes to my eyelids. I was able to stand and I brushed the dirt from my jacket. I was still in working order. I looked all around, turning back and forth. A hill. There was a tree upon the hill. The mountains. Vast fields. Tall grasses. Where was The Strongman? Clouds in the distance. Blue sky above. Where was the whirlwind?

  I must have looked as if I was in a panic, and I do believe I was. I believe I was in shock. My ears wrung terribly. My eyes couldn't completely focus. That was such an event that I had never before experienced. I kept looking all around me. I was dizzy and off balance. I couldn’t find the know-how to yell. Then something caught my eye, far off on the hill below the tree: A flash. Then the sound of a pop carried on the wind. Followed by an invisible jolt to my chest as I fell backwards into the tall grasses. Knocked right off of my feet, my first thought was that the wind was knocked out of me, but it began to feel more like my light was slowly being strangled as my body numbed and my eyes went black.

  26

  A brief word on paraphenomenon, regarding events up to this point.

  The world of study known as paraphenomenon I am no stranger to. Most professors will distance themselves from this type of work from fear of ridicule and mocking. To see what I have seen, that which can not be understood by rational means or practical study, would sway the staunchest skeptic.

  While I laugh at the idea of self slamming doors and cackles in the night, I have personally fought the spectre of banker, Duke Reginald Fiasco. I have seen things that defy explanation. I've even tangled with the non-mythical
Chassaw ape, whom I still blame to this day for the dirigible explosion over Coggingdale Metro. Though, the tornado of undead I would now consider to be one of my strangest occurrences.

  Skeptics of all that is paraphenomenal who claim I embellish my stories have not seen what I have seen and experienced. And I will stand by what I saw on that very day, when I witnessed a man harness the power of paraphenomenal energy.

  I remember clearly opening my eyes. It seemed like I had been out no longer than a moment when I felt his large hand, like a brick, smack my cheek. I opened my eyes to see The Strongman’s face above me, the blue sky above his head. I was woozy and didn’t know what to say.

  “Doc, you OK?” The Strongman helped me sit up as he examined the breast of my jacket, a small hole torn through, “You got shot, Doc.”

  I wasn’t bleeding, nor was I hurt, really. I put my middle finger between the torn fibers in the breast of my jacket and produced a small metal projectile. I examined it in the palm of my hand.

  “You did get shot,” was all The Strongman could muster.

  “There, beneath the tree on the hill,” I said as I looked out across the valley of tall grass. And we picked ourselves up and walked through the tall grasses of the valley towards the small hill. We knew we’d have to take cover low to the ground, using the grasses to hide us, if we saw any movement upon our destination.