AEGIS Tales

by Todd Downing

  And there it was.

  The spirit from my nightmares, billowing like a sheet on a clothes line, snapping savage tendrils of ectoplasm. And the face. The sneering face of evil, an impish skull grinning blade-like teeth, eye sockets empty but for two tiny, glowing sparks—just inches from her own face. I could hear its thoughts, through Mandy and the lens. It had sensed her after the first killing, and as we came closer to discovering its true nature, it had used Mandy’s psychic sensitivity like a convenient cable car, hitching a ride right to her physical body. The displacement of Lamont, the old Mason, was indeed a ruse. This dimension-hopping entity saw her not as a predator, but as a competitor. Of course either one meant it must be rid of her.

  Glowing ember eyes burned into her psyche. Mandy tried to look away, to keep it from maintaining psychic contact with her, all the while trying to keep me connected, and that effort was exhausting her. It wouldn’t be long before simply resisting the entity would prove too much, and she would plummet to her death, and it would feed.

  I tossed a five into the front seat of the cab. It screeched to a stop in front of the basilica, but I was already out and sprinting across the sidewalk and up the front steps.

  The entry was locked from the inside.

  I jogged to the north side of the bell tower and called up to Mandy. All I could see was a strange, flickering blue light and a buzzing sound like a playing card stuck in an electric fan—just like the sound from my nightmare. I held up the lens and could see flashes of light and that sneering, snarling face. Then it looked at me—not at Mandy, but through her and straight into my head.

  And then I was wrapped in tendrils of blue-white spectral energy, and my ears popped as we blinked away into nothingness, and reappeared in midair at the top of the bell tower. Mandy screamed from the arch facing me as I seemed to hover weightless for a split-second. Immediately aware of what was in store for me, I tossed the lens toward her, and she caught it. Then I felt gravity take over, and the ground rushed up at me. As I began to plummet toward the pavement, I caught the quickest glimpse of Mandy holding the lens to her forehead, eyes closed in the use of her power.

  I heard an unholy scream from above, and my shoulder exploded in agony as my left hand snapped out and caught the wrought iron balcony railing of the first level. The pain dimmed for a moment as shock started to kick in, then it washed over me with a vengeance.

  And there I dangled, thirty feet above the street, as a small crowd began to gather on the sidewalk. I knew I could survive a ten, maybe twenty-foot fall onto cement, but survival at thirty wasn’t guaranteed, especially if I impacted the wrong way—ribs could puncture lungs, skull could crack open like a coconut. It felt like I was hanging there for hours, but was probably only a couple minutes at most. The fire in my arm radiated from my neck to the tips of my fingers, and I began to lose my grip as those same fingers began to go numb.

  And I let go.

  The next thing I knew, I was being hauled into the alcove by Mandy and a chubby priest with glasses who said his name was Father Paul. Mandy clutched me tightly and kept repeating, “we did it.”

  We did it, she said. We did it.

  My arm stopped burning and everything went numb, and I passed out hard.

  When I awoke at French Hospital two days later, my left shoulder and arm were in a cast and Mandy was sitting in a chair next to the bed.

  “Morning, Jimmy,” she smiled.

  “You okay, doll?” All I could think of was the peril I’d last seen her in, and how much she meant to me.

  My concern was met with a shy smile and the wave of a hand. “I’m fine.”

  I tried to piece together the fragments in my head, but finally had to ask what happened.

  “You threw the lens to me,” Mandy explained, “and I summoned the entity. It was so intent on killing me that it didn’t hesitate, and I drew it in through the front of the crystal.”

  She adjusted my blanket and added, “I took it to Oscar and he’s locked it away for safe keeping.”

  That didn’t surprise me at all. Of anyone in the city, Oscar Morgan was probably the most reasonable choice to make sure that thing never got loose. And as long as Sergeant Peterson didn’t have to deal with it anymore, I knew he’d be okay with that. Although I wasn’t sure how he’d end up reporting this case. Then again, that was Peterson’s job, not mine.

  I noticed a large bouquet of flowers in a crystal vase in the corner, and immediately wondered if I was in the right room. “Nice flowers,” I observed.

  Mandy noticed my quizzical look. “They’re from that fella, Scariso,” she said. “Apparently we have a new friend.”

  Oh good, I thought. Now we have the attention of a Sicilian family of bootleggers. At least the attention, for now, was favorable. I hoped it would remain that way.

  I tried to sit up, but the stabbing pain in my shoulder had other ideas.

  “Uh uh,” Mandy scolded, arranging the blanket around my chest. “You tore your pectoral muscle, dislocated your shoulder and fractured your collarbone.”

  “That’s quite the laundry list,” I said.

  “They’ve got you on morphine for the pain, and you’ll be in the cast for six weeks. So you might as well relax until they let me take you home.”

  Let me take you home, I thought. I liked the sound of that.

  For what it was worth, 1927 was off to a great start.

  The Pugilist

  by Ron Dugdale

  The fighter flung the wetness from his brow with one swipe of a gigantic green-stained fist. He barely noticed it wasn’t blood, but mere sweat; no matter how many blows his opponents landed, he never seemed to bleed anymore.

  He grunted, standing to his full height of seven feet and shook more sweat from a head that looked as if it had come shipped in a tin can: a barrel-shaped skull covered in leathery flesh, fringed in a salt-and-pepper crew cut, and punctuated by the straight line of a mouth and a Roman nose broken more times than he could remember. Deep-set blue eyes peered out from under a thick, chiseled brow, a sharp contrast to his suntanned skin which rivaled the pigment of any native Egyptian. He wore olive corduroy trousers with a black leather belt, leaving his upper body unclothed. His hands and feet were wrapped in a gauzy linen.

  He gazed down briefly at the sawdust floor. The details of his environment blurred away at the edges—the chipped plaster walls of the less-than-strictly-legal boxing establishment, the musty stench of sweat, hookah and money, and the reddened, shouting faces of local men trying to stretch their poverty by gambling at the cockpit. He focused intently on the giant Kenyan boxer in the opposite corner. Somewhere behind him, a bell clanged twice. By instinct, his meaty, green hands came up to their defensive position, huge fingers curling into fists of stone...

  Those hands.

  A flash of memory returned to him. He’d been a contender for the title, once upon a time, before his last manager ripped him off after an exhibition fight in London and he ended up taking a job as the bodyguard for Lord James Stewart-Murray. A guy had to eat, after all. And, all things considered, protecting the 9th Duke of Atholl was a pretty okay gig.

  John Mabry recalled the invitation sent to Lord Stewart-Murray from Howard Carter to explore the tombs uncovered in ‘22 in the Valley of the Kings. Only Carter’s close friends and select members of the press received such a privilege.

  The Kenyan slammed a fist into the big man’s ribs, and the crowd cheered.

  John remembered the tomb. His curiosity had casually forced him to turn down a side passage as the rest of his party continued to the main chamber. After a few minutes, he’d found a particularly attractive wall relief tucked away in an unadorned alcove. He had marveled at the carving of a beautiful woman attending an ornately-decorated sarcophagus. John leaned closer, so vexed was he by the image that he took a clumsy step on the uneven walkway. He fell forward toward the relief, but rather than being allowed to catch himself against the carving, the façade gave way completely and, wit
h a soft grinding, the wall formed a steep ramp that deposited him into the musty darkness.

  Another punch, this time a left to the gut. The mob was becoming ravenous.

  John remembered lying in on a stone altar, bound and drugged. Then he remembered being awash in fear, and a voice ringing in his head like a battering ram.

  SERVE OR DIE, it had demanded.

  SERVE OR DIE.

  The Fighter shifted his weight and remembered answering the voice with the single word: “Serve.”

  The Kenyan ducked away from a punch that never came, landing a right cross on the fighter’s jaw. The crowd roared in anticipation.

  John recalled the sensation of blood draining from his body, replaced by otherworldly power. He remembered watching as his hands began to turn an oxidized blue-green in hue.

  And he remembered changing his mind.

  Green fists suddenly flew like a broadside of cannon-fire. The Kenyan, surprised at first, rocked back on his heels, curling into a defensive stance. The pugilist landed a left on the Kenyan’s torso, then another left, then a right. The cracking of ribs echoed through the ring.

  A left cross, then two lighting-fast right jabs. The linen wraps on his hands began to stain dark red with the Kenyan’s blood. The opponent staggered back, clearly straining to remain upright.

  Serve or die.

  The uppercut started deep within the fighter’s seemingly molten core, erupting out of his right arm, through his fist and into the Kenyan’s jaw. There was a sickening crunch as the Kenyan’s head whipped backward, his skull disconnected from his spinal column. The huge man sailed through the air to land shoulder first in the sawdust on the floor, backside up, a huge ebony rag doll.

  The fighter didn’t hear the irate shouts of the local men who had just lost their money; their anger and hatred were just a background hum as he turned away from the limp corpse of his former opponent. He might have heard the bell ringing again, signifying the end of the match, but it ultimately didn’t matter. He’d won. John ducked between the ropes and hopped down out of the ring.

  The Frenchman’s name was DeBeque and he had a handful of cash waiting for John in the alcove by the exit. Mabry towered over the smaller man, grabbing the cash in one green fist. Even stained with the Kenyan’s blood from his hand wraps, the money would still spend the same.

  “Sacre bleu, monsieur,” the Frenchman remarked, lighting a Turkish cigarette, “did he even touch you?”

  “He got a few good hits,” Mabry answered in a deep bass.

  “Even so, you’re not supposed to kill them.”

  A few of the local gamblers decided to take their losses out on John Mabry, but the Frenchman’s bodyguards stepped in and ushered them back to the bar in the corner. DeBeque nodded at them and returned his attention to Mabry.

  “I have another challenger if you are interested. But you cannot fight here anymore. The odds against you are already dropping to nothing.”

  John flipped through the handful of bloody, wrinkled bills. “Gezira Club? Always wanted to fight there.”

  DeBeque stifled a surprised laugh. “You’re kidding, non? You would never be allowed on the island, much less fight at the Gezira Sports Club. No, this is a warehouse used by the local dock workers for various ‘events’.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “Tomorrow night,” DeBeque reminded, as Mabry stepped into a pair of black boots, shrugged into a long gray trench coat and stalked out of the club.

  When the night breeze off the Nile hit his face, John finally relaxed. He fished a cigarette out of the half pack of Helmars in his coat pocket, striking a match along the stucco wall of the building as he turned and ambled in the direction of the boarding house on Sharia Abbas, near Ismailia Canal. Inhaling smoke from the Turkish tobacco sent his mind wandering back, as it so often did on nights like this, and he added more vignettes to the mental scrapbook of who John Mabry was.

  He remembered being a young man, working as a stevedore on the docks in San Francisco, moonlighting as an amateur prizefighter for drinks and the occasional trip to the red light district. By the time the war came along, he’d gone legit—with a manager and everything—and was starting to make a name for himself in professional boxing.

  Unfortunately, the managers always got greedy, and John had been ripped off by a string of them. John’s fights became fewer and farther between. The money disappeared and so did the women, and soon he was just another former somebody. Then Lord Stewart-Murray came along.

  John Mabry liked being a rich man’s hired muscle. The hours weren’t so good, but the money was much steadier, and he didn’t have to do much actual fighting. He just scowled and most adversaries backed down.

  Two locals reeking of hashish stumbled from the club and immediately noticed the huge man striding away into the night. They began hurling insults in Arabic and John ignored them, pulling his trench coat a bit tighter around his chest as he continued on his way. The men were intoxicated and definitely angry. Probably lost money on the fight, John presumed.

  They followed him for six long blocks, down Sharia El Madabegh, before John finally turned to face them.

  “Look,” he warned in his gravel pit voice, flicking his cigarette butt on the ground and stepping on it, “I don’t want no trouble. I’m just trying to get home and get some sleep. Comprende?”

  The hash heads glanced at each other and shrugged, and a third man emerged from the shadows of the alley. John suddenly felt the sharp point of a stiletto pressing into his kidney. Another hand rifled through his coat pockets.

  John sighed. “Come on, fellas. Is it really worth all this trouble for a few pound notes?”

  The man with the knife to his back continued to go through his pockets, finding the wad of bills John had earned at the fights. Mabry frowned. The language barrier was one thing, but he didn’t figure they’d be talked out of their score even if he did speak the language. And that money was his—he’d earned it. A huge green hand clamped around the smaller man’s arm and he immediately dropped the cash. John hauled the surprised man around in front of him with the other two. The cutpurse just stared for a moment, shocked at the enormity and brute strength on display. Then he remembered the stiletto in his hand and instinctively slashed with the light blade, opening a deep cut on John’s left cheek.

  John gazed down at the knife while searching his face for the damage. The wound ran from the corner of his mouth almost to his left earlobe. “Aww hell.”

  Maintaining his grip on the man’s arm, John hoisted him up into the air, flinging him into the alley whence he came. He felt a pop as he let the man go, indicating a dislocated shoulder at the least. The other two men paused for a moment, reexamining their life choices. Then they fled into the night.

  A thin film of mucous streaked with blood oozed down his cheek, but no further bleeding would occur. He bent down, picked up his winnings and the dropped knife, quietly folded the blade into its handle and dropped it into his left pants pocket.

  Nice knife, he thought. Think I’ll keep it.

  # # #

  John got back to his flop and paused before going in. He pulled out the tattered note his manager, Thomas Worthington, Lord Stewart-Murray’s traveling secretary, had left for him at the Mena House hotel on the main strip. According to the manager, John had been missing for nearly a month, and, after two weeks of waiting and searching, Stewart-Murray had taken leave of Cairo. He’d left Mabry a ticket back to London at the hotel purser’s office, but Mabry needed traveling money and the Frenchman’s off-the-books fight club was his quickest option.

  He dropped the note in the gutter and walked into the boarding house. The owner gave him a curt 24-hour notice to vacate the room as he walked past the desk.

  Fine. He couldn’t afford to stay here any longer. It was time to go. Tomorrow, anyway. Right now, he just needed a belt of whiskey and some shut-eye.

  Mabry trudged up the makeshift flop house’s creaking central staircase to the third f
loor. He paused for a moment in front of the long mirror at the end of the hall. John had always prided himself in his physique as a prizefighter. Now it was as if every physical attribute had been amplified. His chest was truly barrel-shaped with more muscles than any strongman he had ever seen. His arms and legs were huge knots of twisted anchor cable more at home on the bow of a destroyer than wound around a man’s limbs. His jaw was square and solid, like a stack of bricks hidden under sun-baked burlap. Blue eyes stared back at him, the only part of him that he truly recognized.

  He ran a huge, shovel sized hand through short hair, and tipped his head toward the flickering gaslight. The cut he had received earlier had all but disappeared. Only weathered sandstone skin remained, stained with red. He stared for a moment longer at his hands. His hands were tinged in green, like aged copper. He rubbed them together, trying his best to scrape off the unnatural hue but nothing changed. He let out a deep sigh, then stuffed his hands back into his over-sized trench coat to find his key as he headed down the hallway to his room. Exhaustion was creeping in, and all he could think of was bed and sleep.

  It was moderately-sized apartment—which an establishment of this grade would call a “suite”—with a double bed and a couch on the facing wall. There was a warm breeze blowing in off the alley behind the hotel. Soft street sounds echoed into the room mixed with the scent of cinnamon and freshly-ground dukkah coming from the cafe down the block.

  Funny. He didn’t remember leaving his balcony doors open.