by Byron Craft
My encounter with the thing was beyond unnerving. I was in the kitchen and had just finished oiling and reloading my .45. A habit I did every evening before retiring. My wife was in bed looking more emaciated than ever. I had been contemplating sending her to the hospital the next day. I was worried sick about her. My daughter was in the living room listening to Fibber McGee and Molly on the radio. She screamed. Pressed against the glass in our front door was a bizarre gawking atrocity. Its body filled the large window in our door from top to bottom. Black and rubbery was what popped into my head. Besides a pair of yellow piercing eyes, it did not appear to have a face. I was momentarily stunned but quickly regained my composure. Cocking the hammer on my .45 to the firing position I hollered at my daughter to run into her mother’s bedroom and lock the door. I switched on the front porch light. It startled the thing, and it jumped back. With a free hand, I jerked the door open and came face to face with the dark horror. When it had jumped backward, it had landed on my front lawn. Its dark flesh was smooth and, let God be my witness; it was sporting a huge set of wings. Not like bird wings. They reminded me of the extended membranes I had once seen on a model of a flying dinosaur at the Boston Museum of Natural History. Then a mouth formed at the lower part of its unnatural face. A red tongue lashed about. I took careful aim and shot it straight in the chest. The noise of the .45 caliber discharge woke up everyone on the block. The bullet passed through it and smacked into my neighbors Chevy parked at the curb. The windshield shattered and there was a golf ball-sized hole in the glass on the passenger side. The shadowy demon giggled an insane twitter, shot straight up into the night sky and out of sight.
Bob Grimes’ wife, Betty, died the next morning. The resident doctor and the hospital staff tried valiantly to save her. They had her on intravenous feeding and force fed her daily. All attempts to restore her to normal health failed. Her malnourished condition increased until she deteriorated to a seventy-pound skeleton and stopped breathing.
Bob’s grief gave way to rage. He returned that evening to an empty house. He had accompanied his wife’s remains to Bledsoe’s Funeral Parlor before coming home. Bob Grimes was seething with anger. Bob and Betty had been as close as any couple could be. To him, his life was a hollow shell without her. Armed with the knowledge of Hank Allerby and Stevie Wills’ demise he was motivated by a wrathful fury and most likely death wishes for both himself and Doctor Edgar Hobs. He charged out his front door with a crowbar in hand, except, unlike Allerby and Wills, he was not alone. He gathered a community of twelve volunteers. All the men in the neighborhood that were home that evening were at Bob’s side.
My wife was very ill, as well, and I had no love for the so-called “doctor,” but I couldn’t allow a murder to be committed. I ran like hell towards Hobs’ house. The crowd that was marching down the street was considerable in size. Most were carrying improvised clubs, baseball bats, or sections of steel pipe, while Karl Davis was lugging a deer rifle.
I got to Hobs’ place just as they kicked in his front door. The mob poured through the opening like water from a firehose. They swarmed through every room in the house, their shouts fulminating into one thundering voice of rage. I reached the tail end of the throng and tried to force my way through the front door. I shouted for them to stop but my voice did not carry above the clamor. They were moving frantically from room to room, but it appeared that their quarry was nowhere to be found. Attempting to elbow my way inside, two of them shoved me back onto the front porch. Preparing to barge ahead for a second try, I heard that insane twitter again. It didn’t come from inside the doctor’s house. It came from behind me . . . outside. A crazy chirp followed by an equally bizarre tweeting laughed at me from one of the tall oaks in the front yard. I jumped down from the porch, held my revolver up high and surveyed the treetops. It was too damn dark to see anything!
I ran around the trunks of the two trees that towered above the doctor’s lawn still trying to catch sight of the thing when a different sound distracted me. It was a “whump” noise that came from inside the house. I was shocked when through the front windows, I saw a ball of flame suddenly appear in the crowded dining room. The breadth of the fireball was wider than a man is tall. That night I came face to face with the grotesque reality that there was only one thing more horrifying than the sound of a grown man's screams, and that was the chorus of a dozen souls crying out in searing agony. They were instantly consumed along with everything within the interior of the room.
In the blink of an eye, the sides of the house blew outward. I stood dumbfounded and helpless as a sphere of fire, as high as the rooftops, rolled at a ferocious velocity incinerating all in its path. It went straight down our block. Within an instant, everything that I had known or loved was gone. The entire street where I lived was in ashes. The people of my neighborhood I knew and the ones I called "friend" had been cremated by a horrible demonic act of aggression. My beloved wife and child were taken from me. I fell to my knees and wept.
***
Harry Crowcroft’s story was, to say the least, tragic. Whether it was factual or filled with a lot of embellishments would take time to verify. There was more to his journal and the thick file I inherited. He went on about how he became shell shocked from the event and his losses of that dreadful evening in Boston. After several months of psychiatric care, he started his two-decade vendetta for Edgar Hobs. First, to Pennsylvania, he tracked him to Philly where, per Crowcroft, Hobs assumed the identity of Alva Bifrons, an attorney setting up shop in the historic section of the city. Before Crowcroft’s devil in disguise could mar the rich history on display of the Liberty Bell at Independence Hall or any other monument to the area’s heritage, he ran him out of town by exposing his counterfeit credentials, but not getting close enough for a collar.
In the old detective’s notes and journal, he chronicled the chase as it trailed on for years. Hobs, Bifrons, Crowley, and a dozen more aliases, including Astaroth, were all pursued by him but to no avail. He was always one step behind. Never close enough to catch his culprit. I wondered if there was a pattern there. I sifted through a stack of surveillance photos. Some showed his quarry as tall, some short, others fat, thin, old or young. The physical difference could be attributed to a deranged mind shadowing a myth except that all the photographs bore striking facial similarities. I was in the process of putting the photos in chronological order when the Chief walked into my office. He slammed down a copy of the Arkham Advertiser on my desk. "Read the paper?" he asked.
"Not yet, been busy."
"Peter Carter has been hospitalized. Something to do with a brain tumor. He's withdrawn from the mayoral race."
"Which means?"
"Which means Detective!” he shouted, “that Corvus Astaroth is running unopposed!"
That was my cue to leave. I guessed it was time that I paid Corvus Astaroth a visit.
***
Corvus Astaroth owned the tallest house on French Hill Street, the oldest block in the district. It was a street of unique houses in a town comprised of unique buildings. His was a gigantic house, like a looming primal mountain range, that through the windshield of my Chevy appeared to lean out over the road. The dark stones that comprised the oddly shaped walls of the structure left me with the peculiar notion that they were formed from the very night itself and that the foundation was grown in place rather than constructed. The thought struck me that if I blinked the entire character of his home would alter to something even more grotesque than it currently appeared.
I parked under the porte-cochere at the end of the long driveway. Off a side-drive was a man in a black uniform twisting and contorting in an odd inhuman sort of way as he polished a maroon Packard. Beyond the weird guy waxing the limo, I discerned a dark and bizarre elongated form, its eyes shone in the dying sunlight, luminous like a cat’s. I looked away and then back again. The creature was gone or rather it had never been there, I told myself. The lie comforted me.
There was a bell-pull at the fron
t entrance. I gave it a good tug. As if he had been waiting on the other side, the door immediately opened, and an old codger in a tux stood in the opening. He looked like an undertaker. “Yes,” he drawled.
“Arkham Constabulary,” I said flashing my badge. “I’m here to see Corvus Astaroth.” Tux stepped aside, and I crossed the threshold.
“Wait here,” he replied and closed the door behind me. “I will see if Mr. Astaroth is available.”
“Make it snappy pal. I don’t have all night.” He looked at me as if he had detected a foul odor and ambled slowly away.
The main hallway of Astaroth’s place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a parade of Sherman tanks, was a mural. A dark tentacle laced thing bursting out of a cloud layer glistened and sparkled from the lights of a massive black chandelier that hung from a domed ceiling. The effect was probably enhanced by the artist’s usage of quartz or ground glass embedded into the oils of the paint before they had dried.
Large hard chairs with rounded red velvet seats were backed into the vacant spaces along the walls. The plush seats were in such good condition that they looked like nobody had ever sat on them. It was while I was examining the hieroglyphics in the tiled floor when she walked in.
The dame was delicately put together, but she looked durable. Blond hair and eyes that were slate-gray. They had almost no expression when they looked at me. She had a figure like champagne, but I couldn't help wondering by the way she sauntered in if she possessed a heart like a cork. I am well over six feet tall, and she was only midway past five, making her chest-high glare almost comical. Yet, considering those eyes, made me think about something other than questioning a suspect.
“Tall, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I didn’t mean to be.”
“What’s your name?”
“Reilly,” I said. “Doghouse Reilly.”
"Cute, Raymond Chandler, you are not."
"Sense of humor Angel. I read him for laughs."
“What do you want wise guy?” her voice getting silkier by the moment as she inched her way closer to me.
“I’m here to pay a visit to Corvus Astaroth, what’s your excuse?”
“I’m Mr. Astaroth’s personal assistant.”
“How personal?” I taunted her.
“Don’t get smart copper. It’s a job. Better than working at a dime a dance joint. Besides, nobody loves a fat man but his grocer and his tailor.”
“How’d you know I was a police officer?”
“Word gets around.”
“Then get me to see Astaroth.”
“It’s that away,” she shot back, toying with my lapel with one hand while pointing with the other towards a pair of tall oak doors. “Through the courtyard. On the far end is a door painted black, behind which is his office.”
“Stick around Angel; I may want to talk to you some more.”
***
The courtyard was big, like the rest of the joint, and circular. On my left was a fireplace built into a stone wall. I had never seen a fireplace outside before. Hanging above the hearth was a long iron sword. It was what the Brits called a broadsword, I believed. In the center of the oversized patio was a raised planter that stood a couple of feet above the flagstones, at least ten feet across and circular as well. Plants filled the thing, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like slimy fingers of the dead. I was surprised that they could survive the heat wave that we were experiencing because with all the stonework absorbing the searing rays of the sun, it was hotter in the courtyard than on the streets of Arkham.
Walking to the other side, as directed by my lovely hostess, I came to the ebony door. It wasn’t locked, I didn’t knock, and I went inside.
“Good evening Detective,” greeted my suspect. It was a tidy average sized room, books lined the walls, a highly polished mahogany desk as a centerpiece and he was standing in front of a fireplace. This guy sure must like his fireplaces, I thought. The strangest thing, or actually strange about old Corvus, was that he looked younger than the last time I saw him. He appeared to be a couple of inches taller, and his formerly pure white hair had some streaks of black on it, salt and pepper. Elevator shoes and hair dye? “Hello, Mr. Astaroth.”
“Oh please, my friends call me Ash,” he said with a mouth full of pearly whites. “What do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
“A friend of yours wanted me to say, ‘hello’ Mr. Astaroth.”
“How nice. Who was it?”
“Harry Crowcroft.” The mention of the dead old guy’s name did not have the desired effect. All I got for my troubles was a blank stare.
“I am sorry, but the name does not ring a bell,” he answered most sincerely.
“Are you sure. He’s a police detective, and he says that he’s been shadowing you for years.”
“Definitely a case of mistaken identity. I have never heard of the gentleman.”
There wasn’t a bit of stress in his voice. His eye movements told me that he was truthful. I was beginning to doubt Crowcroft’s story, either that or Astaroth was very, very good at playing his cards close to his vest. “Well,” I added. “I thought you’d like to know that he passed away today.”
“That is sad, but as I said, I do not know the man.”
Still nothing. I decided to shift to another tactic. “You have heard about Peter Carter?”
“Oh yes,” he answered back feigning concern. “Another sad occurrence. I plan on visiting the poor man in the hospital tomorrow.”
“That also means that no one will be running against you for mayor of Arkham since the time to register as a candidate expired two weeks ago.”
“You are right on that one Detective, although I would have rather preferred to have won in a fair election, not by default.”
I found that hard to believe. “I’m sure it has a very positive outcome on your campaign expenses.”
“Despite that, our meeting like this can be a fortuitous benefit for both of us.” He smiled again and turned up a lamp that was on the desk that somehow created more shadows than light. For a brief instant, his image seemed to shift slightly sideways and back again. It was only for a fraction of a second, but within that blink of an eye, I thought I perceived a faceless, formless blackness that sent a shiver through me. As quickly as the vision appeared it vanished.
Still smiling, Astaroth rolled out a hostess cart that had been concealed behind a settee. Sitting atop the cart was an eighteen-year-old bottle of Glenfiddich Scotch whiskey along with a bucket of ice and several mixers. “How do you like your scotch Detective?” he asked.
“In a glass.” I can’t afford Glenfiddich on my salary. I drink the cheap stuff. None of which is legal now. Prohibition is a nationwide constitutional ban on booze. But I don't arrest people for possessing illegal hooch; I leave that to the Federales. If I did, I'd have to arrest myself, and at that moment I was salivating.
“Here you go Detective, neat, no ice,” he announced handing me a glass. He was very generous. He had poured me three-fingers of the perfect whiskey. It was smooth and mellow. I knew I would have to contain myself or else I might end up drinking my weight in single malt scotch.
“I can use a man like you in my administration Detective. The pay will be far more than you earn on a policeman’s salary. You can name your price,” he said as if making a proclamation.
“I don’t come cheap Ash,” I followed deciding to play along with him. Besides, maybe I could finagle another three-fingers of scotch out of him.
“That is not an obstacle my friend.” I was making progress. I just got promoted from Detective to Friend.
“However, there is a price I demand in return. If you come to work for me, I insist on total allegiance and devotion to my administration, absolute, unquestionable loyalty.” The guy was starting to go crackers on me. Next, was he going to ask me to sign a contract in my blood?
“Here is an excellent example,” he added raising his voi
ce and pointing above the mantle. A painting roughly two-foot by three-foot hung over the fireplace. It was a picture of an overweight chinaman in what looked like a bathrobe wearing a red derby that was minus the brim.
"That is the Emperor Gaozu of the Tang dynasty believed to be painted around 620 AD," Astaroth informed. "It is remarkably preserved. They painted on silk back then, not canvas. The Tang dynasty is generally regarded as a high point in Chinese civilization, a golden age of cosmopolitan culture. The painting was done by the artist Yan Xuan. The legend behind the painting speaks well of a man's absolute dedication and loyalty to his superior. It is said that Gaozu was not pleased with the likeness, and Yan Xuan, out of shame at not wanting to offend his Emperor any further, had his hands cut off.” Corvus walked up to me; we came face to face. “What do you think of a man like that Detective?"
"I think he’s a real asshole."
He turned and abruptly walked back to the fireplace. Anger started to show in Corvus’ face for the first time. “You take chances Detective."
"I get paid to."
“My administration will be a lamp spreading light, a beautiful pattern for people to follow.”
“Yeah, you and Tom Edison.”
He really got angry on that one. He took a couple steps toward me for a second time and then shifted sideways again. Only this time I got a better glimpse. He turned black and rubbery, and a yellow hole appeared in the face. Was it a mouth? Then Corvus Astaroth was standing before me as if the whole thing never happened. He still looked madder than a wet hen. He took another step towards me, moving like a man with very sound muscles. I put the glass of scotch down on the desk and started to reach for my Roscoe. As if thinking better of it, Astaroth stopped moving toward me. “You have met my assistant?” he inquired, holding back the rage that was making him red in the face.
