Edward M. Erdelac's Blog, page 4

Cover Reveal: THAT AT WHICH DOGS HOWL (and other Lovecraftian stories)

“We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight.” – H.P. Lovecraft

Coming soon from Raven’s Canticle Press is my second fiction collection, this one focusing on my Lovecraftian output, THAT AT WHICH DOGS HOWL AND OTHER LOVECRAFTIAN STORIES.

Tom Brown has done the cover art and it’s lovely –

The TOC contains a number of my previously published stories, and a couple never before seens…

THE WOODS OF EPHRAIM (from Sword And Mythos) – King David’s Mighty Men pursue the rebel Prince Abasalom into a strange forest.
THE LADY OF THE AMOROUS CITY (from Cirsova Magazine #4) – Sir Kay and his adopted brother Arthur accept a quest to free a mysterious lady’s distant city from the terrors of The Fish Knight.
BY UNKNOWN HANDS (from Shadows Of An Inner Darkness) – A pair of murderous conmen in 1920’s Oklahoma pick the wrong Native woman to bilk for her oil rights.
BROWN JENKIN’S RECKONING (from Tails Of Terror) – The Cats of Ulthar convene to determine how best to deal with the vile creature leading a midnight army of rampaging rats in Arkham.
THAT AT WHICH DOGS HOWL (New) – The events of The Whisperer In Darkness as experienced by its canine protagonists.
IT CAME TO MODESTO (from Atomic Age Cthulhu) – An outcast teenager is rescued from a terrific drag racing accident by a peculiar doctor and his silent granddaughter.
SNEAK PREVIEW (New) – A Hollywood schlockmeister bets on a blacklisted German avante garde director to deliver the horror movie that will fund his passion project.
THE CRAWLIN’ CHAOS BLUES (previously published) – A pair of bluesmen travel to the crossroads to call up the Devil and summon something much much worse.
FIVE TO ONE (from Summer Of Lovecraft) – A fringe professor uses a student riot at Miskatonic University to distract from his occult ritual atop the library.
THE BOONIEMAN (from World War Cthulhu) – A Green Beret unit on a Cambodian forward firebase during the Vietnam War arrives too late to save a Montagnard village from massacre and bears witness to the awesome vengeance of an adopted Tcho Tcho tribesman.
BLACK TALLOW (from The Dark Rites of Cthulhu) – A book translator visits the home of an affluent acquaintance to help translate a puzzling book that will grant the ritualist the deepest desire of his heart.
ANAPARAGOGI (New) – Hell Week for the pledges of Miskatonic Unviersity’s most presitigious frat.
THE THEOPHANY OF NYX (from Fading Light: An Anthology of The Monstrous) – The moon cracks open and discharges a cloud which soon obscures the sun.
THE ALLCLEAR (from Return of The Old Ones: Apocalyptic Lovecraftian Horror) – In the far future, a primitive underground society prepares to send its annual voluntary sacrifical offering to the surface….only to have the previous year’s volunteer miraculously return.

Preorder info when it becomes available.

Where Thunder Dwells In SNAFU: DEAD OR ALIVE

Cohesion Press’ latest entry in their long running SNAFU series of action horror anthologies is called DEAD OR ALIVE, is weird western-centric, and includes my story WHERE THUNDER DWELLS, a sorta-sequel to my old short story IN THUNDER’S SHADOW which appeared wayyyyy back in Chaosium’s EDGE OF SUNDOWN anthology.

In this, a band of bank robbers kidnap an old Apache storekeeper and his daughter and force him to lead them to a secret pass through the Huachuca Mountains, where the old man has previously secreted Bronco Apache outlaws on the run. They are pursued by a murderous Sheriff and his posse, more intent on killing them than capturing them alive. But something up in the pass waits. Something neither of the warring factions anticipated….

Here’s an excerpt.

“Believe I’m ready to settle up,” said Lieutenant Coleson, reaching for his wallet. “Storm’s comin’ in over the Huachucas and I wanna get back to the post.”

Haayashi nodded, her thoughts drifting to her husband, Ves. She hoped he’d seen the thunderheads too and was planning to get back accordingly.

“Think she’ll like it?”

She smiled at the young officer. “Oh I expect she will, Lieutenant. Be a nice surprise.”

Haayashi finished tying up the parcel of gingham just as the lieutenant’s forehead blew open and splattered her shop apron and the counter with dark red brains that quivered like a litter of newborn things shuddering at the cold.

She backed against the shelf, rattling the hard rock-candy jars as the cavalryman, still smiling, slumped to his knees, bashed his chin on the countertop, and tumbled out of sight.

The gingham had been for a new dress for the lieutenant’s wife. He would never see her in it now.

A scruffy N’daa man with a head of curly orange hair stood in the doorway, lowering a big pistol and grinning like a delinquent with a slingshot who’d just busted an upstairs window.

Haayashi rushed around the counter and made a grab at Coleson’s sidearm, but the N’daa headed her off and kicked her in the side so hard she tipped over the medicinal bottles stored there, smashing them to pieces.

She curled on the floor, gasping.

The orange-haired man took Coleson’s pistol, tucking it into the front of his pants.

Nach’aa, her old father, incongruous in his white man’s suit and spectacles with his long, slate grey hair spilling wild from beneath his broad red Apache headband, crept out of the backroom with his Whitney rifle. He would have killed the orange-haired N’daa if a Mexican hadn’t stepped inside and shot her father’s leg out from under him, spoiling his aim. As it was, the N’daa cried out and fell over Coleson’s body, clapping a hand to his side.

“Jesus Christ, Swifty,” a third man said in disgust, pushing past the Mexican. This one had long, greasy yellow hair and a rattlesnake skin hat band. Snaker Pista. He had been in her father’s store a few times, buying bullets and tobacco and trying to bully him into purchasing his rotgut moonshine whiskey. Every time Snaker had come in it had been like letting a wild coyote wander around the store. Nach’aa would lean his Whitney against the backroom door frame at his approach. Only when Snaker left did her father put it back on the wall.

“We need the old man alive,” Snaker said, glaring at Swifty rolling on the floor.

“Pelado shot him,” Swifty groaned. “The old bastard nearly put me under. God, I got a hole in me!”

“That is the aim of a bullet,” Snaker said matter-of-factly. “You sling ‘em around so damn regular don’t be surprised when somebody pitches one your way.” He looked to the Mexican called Pelado as if for an explanation.

“It was just the leg, Snaker.” Pelado shrugged. “He’ll live.”

Snaker tipped his hat to Haayashi and stepped over Coleman’s corpse. “Hello, Haayashi. Good to see you again. Where’s your husband?”

“Out hunting you,” Haayashi growled.

“You underestimate your man. If Ves Payne was after me, why, he’d be right there,” Snaker said, throwing his thumb over his shoulder. He grabbed a fistful of her long black hair and yanked her head up to look him in the eye. “Where is he?”

“Out at the Lazy S, looking for rustlers,” Haayashi hissed. “I just figured it was you.”

“Ain’t no two-bit cow thief, girl. Bigger and better things.” He spat on the floor and dragged her behind him to stand over her father. “Dagotee, y’old bandit. How’s tricks?” He let her go, reached down, and smacked the old man’s face.

Nach’aa made no sound. The back of a hand was like a mother’s kiss to a Mimbreño Apache who had ridden with Victorio.

Haayashi got up on one elbow and strained to watch as Snaker pulled her father up by the shirt front.

“Is it bad?” Swifty whined to Pelado. “Am I dyin’?”

“We’re all dyin,’ chavo,” said Pelado, disinterested. He had picked a can of peaches off the shelf and chopped the top off with the machete he kept tucked in his sash. “Hey,” he laughed, as he put the can to his lips, “maybe you ain’t so swift, ah?”

“You bastard!” Swifty half hissed, half sobbed through his teeth as he got to his knees and clenched his eyes at the pain. There was a dribbling hole in his side, just above his belt. “Oh Lord, Lord… am I done for?”

“Haayashi’ll plug your hole, Swifty, just don’t get tiresome,” Snaker said, not even sparing him a look. “First, girl, you get on over here and fix up your daddy’s leg. He’s got a long ride ahead of him.”

Haayashi rose and limped over to the boxes of linen bandages, testing the stitch in her side with her breath. Pelado’s eyes followed her over the tipped can of peaches.

Snaker stood back as she knelt and bound up her father’s leg. It was bad. The bone was shattered just below the knee, the dirty bullet still lodged in there somewhere. The lead might get black in his veins and find his heart if they waited too long to treat it or saw it off. She looked into her father’s dark eyes.

He read her prognosis, unblinking,

“I know you won’t talk at me or Pelado, old man,” Snaker said, “even though I know you understand. That’s part of the reason Haayashi’s gonna be goin’ with us.” He idly took out his own pistol, spun it on his finger so it came up cocked, and pressed the muzzle to the top of her head.

She stiffened at its touch, locked eyes with her father. His black irises flared like a pair of gun bores. Haayashi shook her head. If her father made a move, they’d both die.

“This is the other reason,” Snaker said. “You sabe?”

Nach’aa looked up at Snaker and bobbed his chin once.

Haayashi turned her gaze to the outlaw. “Where are we going?”

“I know you ain’t as tame as you let on,” Snaker said to her father. “Just ‘cause you scouted for the yellowlegs and married you a Dutch widow and took to runnin’ this store. I know you funneled them Bronco Apaches up through the Huachucas and down into Old Mexico on the sly. You’re gonna show us the way, old man. You’re gonna do it, or you’re gonna bear witness to the slow death of your daughter. Comprende?”

Nach’aa answered in Apache, even, and without a hint of distress or pain, as if explaining the passage of the seasons to a child. “I will take you, white-eye. I will take you where I took the Broncos – to The Place Where The Thunder Dwells. If you harm my daughter, I will take you there all the sooner.”

Haayashi frowned. Of course she knew her father had helped the renegade Apache, the Broncos who would not surrender to Crook and board the train to Florida. He’d done it for years. Sometimes it was with bullets and feed and bandages from her mother’s store. Other times they had come under the cover of night, half-starved with their bandoliers empty and the hooves of their tired horses wrapped in buckskin, and the white law thirsty for their blood. Some would come asking for the secret way to sanctuary, the hidden stronghold, The Place Where The Thunder Dwells.

After a few low words, Nach’aa would set out with them in the dark to show them the way. Always by morning he would return alone. Massai and The Apache Kid, who were still being blamed for every act of murder and thievery from here to Flagstaff, had been taken to The Place by Nach’aa. He had never spoken to her about it, nor to her late mother, nor to any other man so far as she knew.

“He said he will take you,” Haayashi said. Snaker laughed. “He said a lot more than that, but OK.”

Pick up SNAFU DEAD OR ALIVE here –

The Jewish Tradition In Weird Fiction Panel At Necronomicon

…..was recorded by Outer Dark, and I’m on it. You can give a listen here.

TOD 114 The Jewish Tradition in Weird Fiction Panel at NecronomiCon 2022

Children Shouldn’t Play With My Halloween Movie Repertoire!

The decay of sweet sugar strangely acquired besets the teeth of masked boys and girls, and the blazing orange and red leaves tumble like cast off flesh from the skeletal boughs that claw across the white face of the autumn moon. Ah yes, it’s my favorite time of year. Every shadow is a pregnant dread, every stir of brush or snap of twig a presage of doom. Halloween season’s upon us!

Regular followers will know every year I embark on a quest to watch as many horror movies as I can (used to be 31 movies for 31 days, but that began to feel like a paltry number). They have to be first time watches but they can come from any era.

Off to the races!

#1 – The Incredible Melting Man – An astronaut on a mission through Saturn’s rings is bathed in cosmic energy. Instead of gaining stretchy powers, his flesh begins running like snotty molasses and he develops an inexplicable craving to kill and (I guess) consume his victims. Plodding and unfocused as its goopy subject, but the Rick Baker FX and gore are top drawer. A shot of a severed head tumbling down a waterfall and bursting open on some rocks is particularly memorable. I loved the charming old couple who get punished for stealing ‘hot oranges.’ I’m almost positive the NASA control countdown dialogue during the launch is sampled in Trent Reznor and 10,000 Homo DJ’s cover of Supernaut by Black Sabbath.

#2 – Smile – When therapist Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) observes the bizarre suicide of a patient first hand, she finds herself subjected to a hallucinatory series of increasingly homicidal visions which may not be a product of her own trauma. Scattered neat visuals and a truly great, goosebump-inducing score by Cristobal Tapia de Teer kind of go to waste on a pretty predictable story dosed with a plethora of cheap if effective jump scares. A lot is overexplained, not much left to the imagination.

Rainbringer: Zora Neale Hurston Against The Lovecraftian Mythos Now In Audiobook

The audiobook version of Rainbringer: Zora Neale Hurston Against The Lovecraftian Mythos, narrated by Musu-kulla Massaquoi is now available! Give it a listen!

https://www.amazon.com/Rainbringer-Hurston-Against-Lovecraftian-Mythos/dp/B0BB862W5K/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1661485020&sr=8-1

The Gilded Skulls In Shadows Over Avalon

Out now from 18th Wall Productions is Shadows Over Avalon, an anthology of Lovecraftian Arthurian stories featuring Dylan Freeman, Richard Sheppard, Josh Reynolds, Simon Bucher-Jones, Ethan Sabatella, Timothy Williams, Tim Mendees, Tim Hanlon.

My own offering, The Gilded Skulls, is a Lovecraftian take on the story of The Black Hermit from Perlesvaus, AKA The High Book of The Grail.

It takes place shortly after the loss of the Holy Grail (as depicted in my Arthurian novel The Knight With Two Swords) and follows Sir Gawaine, the pagan lord of the Castle of Marvels, as he investigates a strange black stream running through his lands, corrupting the fish and surrounding plant life. Following the stream to an oddly constructed castle, Caer Delex, he encounters his own sister Clarissant and a weird group of nuns bearing a reliquary wagon laden with jewel encrusted skulls, there to stop the master of the castle, The Black Hermit, and his army of knights in eyeless helms from despoiling the land of Avalon. But Gawaine and Clarissant can’t do it alone, and seek out an unlikely ally, the Christian knight, Sir Percival de Galis, whose father Gawaine slew long ago….

——————————————————————————————————————–

Clarissant tapped her teeth with the end of her finger.

“Whatever this Percival’s reputation, his sword is the only thing that could break the Mad Helm of the Black Hermit. But where is he?”

“Alas, I don’t know,” said Floree.

“He quests for the Lost Grail,” said Gawaine, “as do most of the Round Table. He could be anywhere. We might spend ages crawling over the hills and dales looking for him.”

“Then we need the eye of one no longer bound by hills and dales,” Clarissant said, and moved over to the sack containing the head of Ampflise. “Floree, bring me The Revelations.”

Floree rose and went to the reliquary. She began to rummage inside.

“I thought you’d had your fill of Christianity when they bricked you up inside that chapel wall,” Gawaine said teasingly.

“That was a misunderstanding on my part,” she said. “And I didn’t say which Revelations.”

She removed a number of candles from a bindle, which she set around the corners of the linen cloth.

She undid the fastenings on the sack and reached in to take the head of Ampflise from within. Her eyes narrowed.

“Gawaine,” she said, an edge of urgency to her voice. “Bring your sword over here.”

“What’s the matter?” Gawaine asked.

Clarissant stood and shook the sack from the head. When it fell away, Gawaine nearly pitched back on his culet.

The head of the Lady Ampflise twitched and shook in Clarissant’s hands. The black webbing that had spread from the arrow in its eye just beneath the flesh, had sprouted a mass of similarly black tendrils from the neck. These snaky protuberances writhed and wound around Clarissant’s wrists.

“If you’re doing that, stop it,” Gawaine said gravely.

“Of course I’m not doing it! Cut it, Gawaine! Use your sword! Cut it away!” she said, with an ever-increasing air of panic.

Gawaine drew Galatine and stepped toward his sister, unsure of precisely where to cut.

“Hurry, Gawaine! It’s….tightening….”

Gingerly he reached out and gripped one of the black tubers encircling Clarissant’s wrist with his gauntleted fingers. He was shocked to find them quite hard and unyielding. They were not roots or serpents at all, but a kind of animate metal, somehow hard as iron or stone and yet pliant.

Floree came over with a thick, mottled book bearing strange markings, and a blue velvet bag which she dropped in surprise. The bag opened, spilling its contents; a mortar and pestle, a tinkling bell, a brush, and a set of iron tongs.

“Oh!” Floree exclaimed, putting her hand to her mouth.

Gawaine pulled at the coil of black metal around his sister’s left wrist as much as he dared, and slid the blade of Galatine between it and her flesh, eliciting a sound of squealing metal against metal as he worked it down. He wasn’t sure if he could cut the stuff, but to his surprise, the edge of Galatine parted it easily. The severed portion fell to the grass and whipped about, the cut end glowing a bright emerald color.

Gawaine kicked it into the fire, where it flared green and melted instantly away like candlewax.

“Floree, pass me the tongs!” Clarissant called, as Gawaine gingerly sawed the other tendril from her wrist and again, hastily toed the cut portion into the campfire.

Floree handed her the tongs.

Clarissant put her palm to the severed head and pinned it to the ground, avoiding the mass of snaking metal tubers groping beneath the neck. She pinched the shaft of the black arrow in the tongs and pulled it from the narrow opening of Ampflise’s eye socket.

Gawaine watched in sickly fascination as the mass of tendrils were drawn up into the neck, the eye socket bulged, and the whole affair came bursting out of the wound, a disgusting, gleaming black mass caught like a squid in the pincers of Clarissant’s tongs.

Immediately the arrow shaft lost its rigidity and began to writhe and whip about like a thing alive, as if it had only been masquerading as an arrow.

Gawaine raised his sword to slash at the thing, but Clarissant swiftly turned and held it in the fire.

Floree set the book down and took up the mortar.

The black thing curled and undulated like a ball of snakes in pain over the flames, then ignited as the cut halves had, in a strange, green flash, dissolving too quickly for any natural metal. It liquefied like emerald mercury, and Floree was there to catch the drippings in the mortar, where it cooled instantly into fine green shavings.

“What is that stuff?” Gawaine whispered.

“The raw material of R’lyeh. That in which the Architects work,” said Clarissant. “Metal and stone, alive and dead.”

She went to work pulverizing and mashing it down with the clinking pestle, muttering under her breath words Gawaine could not understand. They surely weren’t the Latin spoken in the Christian masses.

Clarissant laid aside the tongs and took the mortar from Floree, who in turn, picked up the book with the mottled cover and knelt before Clarissant, holding it open, a human lectern.

Clarissant stirred the brush in the green stuff, reading in a loud voice some incantation from the strange book. She then turned and began to paint sharp, intricate green symbols on the severed head of Ampflise with the brush.

When she had covered the woman’s entire face and scalp, she sat back on her heels and dumped the remaining pigment in the fire, where it flared an angry green before being consumed. She set the painted head of Ampflise in the center of the linen and lit a candle at each corner. Then she put her forehead to the ground, spoke more words, and rang the bell three times.

The slack, painted face of Ampflise began to twitch, a horrid sight, around the gaping, ragged wound through which the black metal thing had been pulled.

Gawaine’s neck hairs uncurled and gooseflesh rose on his arms.

“What is….,” he began, but Floree hushed him.

He stepped back and stared wild-eyed at the magic proceedings, gripping Galatine for all his worth and wishing it was morning. Every shadow around the edge of the fire seemed pregnant with all manner of horrors, demons worse than that in Caer Delex, manipulating the dead face of Ampflise with unseen hands, like puppeteers of indecorous humor.

Clarissant addressed the head, but the only words Gawaine understood was her name, Ampflise.

The unmarred blue eye, which had been drooping in the dead face, rolled and focused finally on his sister.

Gawaine put the edge of his hand in his mouth to keep his teeth from clicking together. He bit deep into the leather between the steel joints when a low voice answered from the pale lips of Ampflise, echoing as though it came from somewhere far off.

Clarissant and the head conversed this way for a few moments, and the eye of Ampflise darted about as though searching for something. Then Clarissant rang the bell three times more and touched her head to the ground.

Floree shut the book. As soon as it closed, the animated face sagged lifeless once more.

Clarissant blew out the candles, carefully, reverently wrapped them up with the head in the linen cloth, and then stood and dropped the bundle in the fire.

“Sir Percival rests at the hermitage of Elyas on the River Luce,” Clarissant announced. “Do you know it, Gawaine?”

Gawaine sighed.

“It’s not far from here.”

Come On Down To Providence!

Tomorrow and Saturday I’ll be speaking at Necronomicon in Providence, Rhode Island! Come check me out!

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I’m On Lovecraft Ezine!

Hey!! Bucket list event! I was live on the much esteemed Lovecraft Ezine with fellow authors Douglas Wynne and Pete Rawlik under the direction of the illustrious Mike Davis!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHo0MFGSDrY

A List Of Weird Western Books I Revere

Sherpherd invited me to compile a list of weird western books I recommend. Here it is!

https://shepherd.com/best-books/for-those-who-like-their-westerns-weird

The Deferment: A Kolchak Story

Well, my Kolchack story was rejected from that antho. Not unkindly, but as I can’t do anything with it, here it is, free to read, as promised.

———————————————————————————————————-

At approximately 11:55 on the night of October the 6th, Gerald Fitzgerald, a twenty three year old student at Columbia College, rendezvoused with his paramour, one Miguel Pacheco, twenty two year old apprentice plumber, in a secluded, wooded area on the south end of Lincoln Park behind the Chicago Historical Society, which in recent years had gained a reputation as a meeting point for lovers of their particular persuasion.

It was while fumbling in the dark in a stand of bushes looking for a place to spread out a picnic blanket that the two ardent youths inadvertently stumbled into the penultimate chapter of what would prove to be one of the city of Chicago’s most unsettling family sagas, a story whose most macabre and fantastic elements had, in the nature of compelling narratives, been saved for last.

At some point close to the stroke of midnight, Fitzgerald and Pacheco perceived a strange muttering, and curious, followed the sound through the shrubbery to a manmade edifice which we now know to be the storied Couch Tomb. There, they perceived a feminine figure all in flowing white, luminous in the pitch black, facing its open doorway, arms upraised.

“Las tumbas pertenecen a los muertos, no a los vivos!” the ghost reportedly called out.

Mr. Fitzgerald, being of a more sensitive nature than Mr. Pacheco, cried out in alarm and found his exclamation echoed in a shrill, high voice by the ghostly figure.

Fitzgerald turned and ran through the bushes from the sight of the apparition, Pachceco in tow, and the two collided with Patrolman Anthony Diaz, who’d been assigned the unenviable task of dissuading the amorously inclined from further sullying the park’s long-suffering reputation.

The two did nothing to resist arrest, but entreated Officer Diaz to confirm what they had seen.

Diaz crept through the bushes, weapon and flashlight drawn.

He found no moon-white specter waiting for him at the now sealed iron door of the Couch Tomb, but there on the stone porch, he saw what he surmised to be seven neat, red drops of fresh blood….

Of course, I didn’t get this part of the story from Officer Diaz until a day after the events in question transpired.

Vincenzo, at his wits end after the pursuit of my last story had yet again failed to yield a publishable article for the INS, had assigned me an excessively boring task; covering the extensive renovation plans being enacted by the city to prepare Lincoln Park for the hosting of the Second Annual National Garden and Landscaping Convention next spring.

So, with my TC-40 over my shoulder, I made my way down to the Lincoln Park Cultural Center to the office of administrator Gus Skalka, whom I found engaged in a heated discussion with a woman of some official capacity.

“Gus,” the woman said, tiredly. “You’re not proposing anything new here. The city didn’t have the money to relocate the tomb in 1864 and it doesn’t have the money now.”

“Excuse me…tomb?” I interrupted.

“The Couch tomb,” the woman explained. “It’s the last remnant of the old cemetery.”

“You mean the park used to be a graveyard?”

“It still is, unless you believe the city actually relocated twenty thousand bodies. Who are you?”

“Ah sorry. Carl Kolchak Independent News Service.”

“My nine ‘o clock appointment,” said Skalka. “Apologies, Mr. Kolchak,” he said, looking at the woman pointedly. “It seems my eight thirty is running a little over.”

I planted myself in a chair against the wall.

“Oh go ahead, I don’t mind if you don’t mind,” I said, holding up my tape recorder.

“I don’t. Thank you, Mr. Kolchak,” said the woman.

 “Yeah, thanks a lot,” said Skalka, sighing and rubbing his forehead with the palm of one meaty hand.

“Carl, please,” I said, tipping my hat. “Uh…and you are?”

“Carol Davenport. I’m with the Historical Society.”

“Look, Carl…,” Skalka began.

“Hm?” I said.

“Um. Carol,” Skalka corrected himself. “OK, maybe we aren’t talking about relocation at all.”

“Surely you’re not suggesting demolition?” Carol exclaimed in disbelief.

“That thing is an eyesore.”

“That thing dates back to 1858!” said Carol, obviously impassioned. “It’s a van Osdel!”

“Excuse me, a van what?”

Skalka shrugged.

“John van Osdel?” Carol said. “The city’s first architect of note? It’s probably the oldest structure to survive the fire of 1871.”

“People don’t want to be reminded they’re picnicking in an old cemetery, Carol. Plus it’s become a hangout for junkies and a make-out spot for….”

He glanced at me and cleared his throat.

“Well, we’re supposed to be improving the park’s image. You know we had two arrests last night?”

“At the tomb?” I interrupted.

“Yes,” said Skalka. “Somebody tried to break in.”

“Did they get inside?” I asked.

“It would take a bulldozer to get inside,” said Carol. “It’s been sealed for over a hundred years.”

“Well, they claimed the door was wide open last night,” Skalka said, laughing into his coffee cup. “Maybe they really did see the ghost.”

“What ghost?” I asked, intrigued.

“It’s a local legend,” said Skalka, waving his hand. “Something about showing up at midnight and saying something and the tomb opens and you see the ghost of Ira Couch or his wife or something. The thing’s a magnet for all sorts of weirdness, especially this time of year. Dead animals and…”

“Dead animals?” I asked.

Skalka looked down at my tape recorder.

“Um. Mr. Kolchak are you recording?”

“Yes sir, I’ve been recording since I got here. The lady said she didn’t mind.”

He cleared his throat.

“Well, let’s just say it has a sordid reputation and leave it at that.”

Carol stood up, shouldering her purse.

“I have to go, Gus,” she said abruptly. “I’m late for another appointment.”

“Alright Carol,” said Skalka. “But listen, I’ll be pushing for removal at the next meeting.”

“And I’ll be petitioning for preservation,” she said from the doorway. “Good day, Mr. Kolchak,” she said to me.

I tipped my hat as she let the door slam shut resoundingly, her heels clacking off down the hall.

“Something I don’t understand,” I said, backtracking, “why is that tomb the only thing still standing from the old cemetery? I mean, there must have been other mausoleums.”

“Mr. Kolchak, wouldn’t you rather talk about the preparations for the upcoming National Garden and Landscaping Convention? I know I would. Anyway, isn’t that why you’re here?”

It was, of course, so I settled in for the long haul. I could almost hear Vincenzo laughing from his office.

As Couch’s tomb obstinately remained a part of the park, it settled into my craw as well, and I decided to take a closer look.

I found the tomb by asking around. It was just a stone’s throw from the back of the Historical Society where Ms. Davenport plotted like an enemy general against the machinations of Gus Skalka and the city parks and recreation department.

The tomb was a solid, grey bunker of cemetery stone, unadorned but for the name Couch over the iron door and various encroaching flora. Skalka’s talk about animals and a ghost and weird happenings interested me, but I didn’t see much of anything out of the ordinary beyond the fact that it was sitting in a public park only a few steps from the busy traffic of LaSalle Drive.

A city groundskeeper saw me taking pictures.

“Hey there!” I called to him. “What do you know about this old chestnut?”

“I know around this time of year I always end up picking dead chickens and such off the porch.”

“Dead chickens?”

“Yep. Throats cut and bled all over. Devil worshipping stuff, you ask me.”

“You ever see who’s doing that?”

“Nah, they come at night I guess, and they’re gone by morning. Doesn’t always happen. Just sometimes.”

“Mainly around this time of year?”

“Halloween. Yeah. Brings out the nuts.”

“You ever hear the ghost story? Midnight recitations and all that?”

“Sure. Two kids got pinched last night messing around here, said they saw it. Door open and everything.”

I looked over the vault door. It seemed pretty solid, and I didn’t see a hinge.

“What’s that thing you’re supposed to say?”

“The graves belong to the dead, not the living,” the groundskeeper said in his best Vincent Price voice, which actually wasn’t bad.

Curiosity was leading me to a midnight appointment in Lincoln Park. Maybe I could sell Vincenzo on a Halloween flavor piece.

I had a lot of time to kill, and as the Historical Society was only a few steps from the tomb, I decided to follow up with Ms. Davenport.

Her co-worker, Mr. Murray, informed me she had gone downtown to file the necessary paperwork to have the tomb in question declared a landmark, as she had said she would.

It turned out the Couch family was the subject of a book Mr. Murray was researching. As a man who seemed to spend most of his time perusing the lonely stacks of his dusty domain, when I asked him about the identity of his silent neighbor I found him excitedly forthcoming.

“Which one?” he said with a kind of macabre glee, so eager to speak into my mic for posterity that I had to pull it away a little to keep him from swallowing it whole.

“Well, let’s start with Ira Couch and go on down the line.”

“Ira was a hotelier,” Murray began. “He came from nothing, built the city’s first luxury hotel, Tremont House. Twice. It burned down once in October of 1839 and again in October of 1843.”

“October was an unlucky month for him,” I remarked.

“Very. It burned a third time in 1871.” He looked at me expectantly.

“The Great Chicago fire,” I said. “What month was that?”

“October again,” Murray chuckled, happy I’d picked up what he’d laid down. “The 8th. Same say as the other two fires.”

“Say that’s a little more than a coincidence. He must have made a bundle to be able to keep rebuilding. Is it still standing?” I asked.

“Oh yes. The family fell into dire straits and sold it to Northwestern University around the turn of the century.”

“I guess the university had more luck. So what happened to Ira?”

“He died suddenly while vacationing in Cuba in 1857. There were provisions in his will to cover the cost of the tomb, which was a good idea as it was something around seven thousand dollars, more expensive than most houses of the time…by far.”

“And his wife was interred with him? It’s a big tomb for two people. Looks like it could hold more.”

“It might,” said Murray. “Ira’s brother, daughter, grandson…there could be up to eleven bodies in there. Generations. Or none at all.”

“You mean it could be empty?”

“I don’t want to hurt Ms. Davenport’s chances at having the tomb declared a landmark,” Murray begged off. “You know Mr. Kolchak, the presence of corpses tips the scale in such matters.”

He leaned forward into the mic again and I had to bring it further back.

“But Ira and his wife have headstones at Gracehill Cemetery up north. Their corporate office is very stingy with the old burial records.”

“Why?”

“Some say the Couch family pays Gracehill not to divulge that information.”

“Why would they care?”

“That’s hard to say, because there hasn’t been a living Couch in the last few decades. The family’s fortunes dwindled and the last descendent died off.”

“But then who’s paying Gracehill?”

“Ms. Davenport told me confidentially that she learned from an employee that the cemetery’s discretion was paid for in perpetuity by Ira Couch himself. In his will.”

“That’s pretty forward thinking,” I muttered.

I gave Mr. Murray my card and asked him to tell Ms. Davenport I’d been by, and to call me if he turned up anything else interesting concerning the Couches and their eternal abode. I made my way back to my car, thinking to go home and nap before the appointed hour.

I found an angular sort of gent, black haired, with a wine dark suit whose price tag would have made my seersucker blush slipping a business card under my windshield wiper while he whistled a catchy little tune.

“She’s not for sale,” I said.

“I’m not in the market anyway, Mr. Kolchak,” the man said in an accent that I pegged for Latin American.

“You have me at a disadvantage, Mister…”

“Forgive me. Domingo Seaver is my name. I’m a collections agent.”

“What are you looking to collect on, Mr. Seaver?” I asked nervously, trying to think of the last time I’d bet on the Cubs and when my next paycheck was due in. I fumbled with my keys and dropped them.

Seaver stooped and handed them to me.

“Rest easy. No debt of yours, Mr. Kolchak. I am seeking tardy remuneration for services rendered. The debtor has gone to great lengths to avoid repayment, even going so far as to steal an object of remarkable value from another party in the hope of….”

“Robbing Peter to pay Paul?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling a row of fine, even white teeth. “They have since gone to ground. Assumed a false identity.”

“Well, what does this have to do with me, Mr. Seaver? I’m no private eye.”

“Nevertheless, I have reason to believe your current investigation has crossed over my own. I ask only that you contact me should you happen across the individual in the course of fulfilling your duties, so that I might in turn fulfill my own.”

“My current…I’m covering a story about park renovation,” I said, slipping past him. Something about him got under my skin. He had movie star looks but dirty fingernails.

He reached over and opened my door for me. I’d evidently missed seeing him put my key into the lock.

“Thanks. Well, who am I supposed to keep an eye out for?”

“That is difficult to say,” said Seaver, closing the door. “The surest method of identification would be their possession of the stolen collectible. It is quite singular in appearance. A porcelain tureen with gold accents, inset with cowrie shells. The lid would be sealed with black wax.”

I turned my engine over and laid my camera and recorder on the seat next to me.

“Black wax? Well, Mr. Seaver….,” I said, looking up at him.

But there was no ‘him’ to see. Seaver was gone. I looked up and down the street, but saw no sign of him. I shook my head, reached over, and pulled his card off my windshield. There was his name and occupation in gold lettering, but no number anywhere on it – a sure reason for getting a new printing company if ever I’d seen one.

I drove off, whistling Seaver’s tune. Like I said, it was catchy.

After a modest dinner and what I had proposed to be a nap, I found I had overslept. I arrived at Lincoln Park around 11:58 on the evening of the 7th, sure I was going to miss my appointment with whatever was scheduled to appear at the tomb.

In my hurry to reach it, I suddenly made the acquaintance of the aforementioned Patrolman Diaz.

“Park’s closed,” he informed me. “Didn’t you see the sign?”

“Well, it’s dark,” I said.

“Yeah well it closes at sundown. They all do. What are you doing out here?”

“Sorry, Officer, my name’s Carl Kolchak. I’m with the INS. I’m doing a story, a Halloween piece on the Couch tomb….”

It was at that point that we heard the spine prickling shriek, piercing at first, but then dwindling out in the dark.

We both ran towards it, towards Couch’s tomb, Diaz’s flashlight spot bouncing in front of us, until at last it fell like a stark stage light on some Grand Guignol performance. There, sprawled on the porch of the tomb, was a woman all in white, blood spilling brightly down the front of her dress, her dark eyes shrinking in the light of the policeman’s flash as she gasped her last breath.

Diaz went to her side to check her vitals, but hesitated. I saw his eyes go to a green and yellow bracelet on the victim’s wrist, and a series of colored beads around her neck. She was an older woman, Hispanic, and her dark face was marked with patterns of white paint.

Diaz checked her pulse and then recited something low in Spanish.

Then he arrested me.

“Kolchak, what the hell’s going on?” Vincenzo roared as I retrieved my camera and recorder from booking, having spent the night in a holding cell and playing dumb to a homicide detective with Oscar-worthy aplomb. “You’re supposed to be covering the prepwork for a flower convention!”

“I was, Tony, I assure you,” I said, scanning the station for Officer Diaz. “I was taking pictures of the grounds to accompany my piece. A before and after comparison. Should have been a literal walk in the park.”

“At midnight?”

“Night blooming flowers?” I suggested.

“What’s this about a murder?”

“Well you know, a good reporter, I think, has a nose for these kinds of things. He puts himself in the way and just attracts news.”

“I’ve got a nose for something too,” Vincenzo muttered. “And what you’re attracting is flies, Carl. What’s the story here?”

“Trust me, Tony! Good stuff for the Halloween edition.”

“Every edition isn’t the Halloween edition. I want the parks and rec story by tomorrow morning. Your extracurricular activities better not delay it.”

“You’ll have it and more, mein capitan.”

“And next time don’t spend your one phone call on me. It’ll be a waste.”

“Ja vol,” I said, saluting as we came out into the sunshine. “Hey I could still use a ride back to the park to retrieve my car.”

“Get a cab,” Vincenzo said, stomping off down the street. “I did.”

As fate would have it, Officer Diaz exited the station behind me in plainclothes, evidently finishing his shift.

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry about the detainment, Mr. Kolchak. We have to cover all our bases. No hard feelings, huh?”

“Not at all not at all,” I said, waving my hand. “Any word on who that woman was?”

He looked at me uncertainly.

“I’m not really at liberty to give you a press release,” he said, and began to walk.

“Off the record,” I said, keeping up with him.

“Off the record, no. But she had a Cuban passport.”

“Are you Cuban? I ask because of what you said over the body. Sounded like a prayer….”

“What are you asking me, Kolchak?”

“Well I noticed that woman had a green and yellow bracelet on….sort of like the one you’re wearing.”

“Pretty sharp,” Diaz said, holding up his hand so the bracelet showed on his wrist. “That’s an ide bracelet. It means that woman was a santera. A priestess.”

“Like a Voodoo priestess?”

“Santeria, man,” said Diaz.

“Her throat was cut wasn’t it? Is there human sacrifice in Santeria?”

“No, man. It’s a legit religion, not some kind of comic book jive. At least…not when it’s practiced for good.”

“Chickens, though?”

“We call it matanza,” said Diaz. “An ebbo – a blood offering to the oricha. The ancestral spirits.”

“Why would somebody make an ebbo at the door of the Couch tomb? Anything special about October the 7th? 8th?”

“Not that I know.” He stopped at an oldsmobile parked on the street. “This is me.”

“Oh one more thing,” I said snapping my fingers as he got in his car.

“I got two nights off, Kolchak. And I wanna get started on ‘em.”

“Do you use tureens in Santeria? Uh, fancy porcelain with cowrie shells…sealed with black wax?”

He looked at me sharply.

“You’re describing a sopera,” he said. “It contains the fundamentos of a Santeria temple. Sacred objects in which the patron oricha spirit dwells. But black wax? Nah, that’s not a thing. You should quit poking, Kolchak. This stuff ain’t for you, dig?”

As he pulled away from the curb and I began my long, thoughtful walk back to the car, whistling that tune.

I returned to the INS office to write up the parks and rec story, and while taking a break to grab a coffee, the regular thunderous passage of the L train outside the office windows nearly made me miss my ringing desk phone.

It was Mr. Murray.

“Mr. Kolchak!” he said excitedly. “I wonder if you’d be interested in drumming up interest in my book with an article on the Couch family.”

“Well I was thinking about a Halloween piece, Mr. Murray,” I said. “I’d be willing to cite you as a source and mention your book. Did you find something new to add?”

“I’ll say! Something revelatory,” Murray said. “Remember how I told you the last living Couch descendant passed away? I’ve found another and,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper, “you won’t believe who it is. Miss Davenport. Right here in the Historical Society! Can you believe it? I feel like I’ve been working alongside hidden royalty the whole time!”

“How’ you figure this out?” I asked.

“Well the fortunes of the family did dwindle drastically in the last decade. That part’s true. But I was digging in the Cook County vital records and found her petition. She legally changed her name. Probably to avoid the back taxes the family had incurred over the years. Isn’t that fascinating?”

“Very. Is she in today?”

“No she called in sick. You know as her coworker I’d feel a little weird approaching her about this but as you’re a reporter…”

“Sure sure, that sounds swell, Mr. Murray! Why don’t we both compile a list of questions and you get back to me?”

I hung up.

Miss Davenport wasn’t in.

But I had a pretty good idea where she’d be.

I didn’t bother to sleep this time, so I arrived at the park at 11:45 with plenty of time to make my way to the tomb. It was surrounded by police tape and sawhorse barricades, but I got a good vantage to watch the action, whatever it was.

Some kind of ritual had been interrupted by the arrival of the santera the night before. I knew there was nothing stopping it tonight. Not even Officer Diaz.

I kept an eye on my watch.

11:55.

11:56.

Then at 11:58 I heard it. A low female voice chanting in Spanish.

I crept closer. The approach to the tomb was clear around the bushes but I hadn’t seen anybody enter.

No doubt somebody was there, though. The closer I got the louder it was. There was a faint orange glow under the lip of the door, flickering.

I crouched down, leaning against the door to slip my mic as close to the gap as I could get, so as to get a clearer recording.

And then I heard a grinding noise, and the door swung inward.

I tumbled inside.

I found myself inside a kind of small foyer lined with funeral drawers. I counted ten, made out Ira Couch’s bronze nameplate, others. Seated against each of the drawers was a hand sewn doll. Their costumes ranged from white Victorian gowns to modern suits. But what got my attention was a second door set into the far wall. Inside was a candlelit altar, blazing. In the center was the white tureen, the gilded sopera Seaver had described, draped in colored necklaces and surrounded by severed black chicken heads, deliberately arranged. There was a smoking cigar in an ashtray and a large botte of clear fluid.

I peered into the inner room. The chanting had stopped. I got out my camera to take a picture.

As I moved into the inner doorway, a horrific, painted pale face shrieked at me from the dim corner, and a blur of white came at me, brandishing a silver knife.

In surprise I triggered my flash, blinding the figure, and dove into the room to duck the knife. I fell against the altar, and tureen, beads, ashtray, and poultry head came crashing down in heap. Whatever was contained in the tureen exploded in a flash of light as blinding as a lightning bolt.

Then a tremendous, howling wind blew into the tomb, snuffing out the candles. It was a hurricane gale, so loud it sounded like the roaring of a great voice. It knocked me flat.

When I looked up blinking through the red spots, I saw the outline of a man standing in the tomb’s outer doorway.

Carol Davenport saw him too and screamed.

He stepped inside, and the dolls in the outer foyer burst into flame.

I couldn’t make out his face, but he held out his hand beckoned, and Carol Davenport went to him as if in a trance, taking hold of his elbow as though he were an old fashioned suitor.

They turned and left the tomb.

I picked myself up off the floor, found my camera, and stumbled outside between the burning dolls.

There was no on outside just the cool, dwindling wind.

At 6:30 in the morning after a sleepless night of listening to my tape recordings, I returned to the empty INS office, whistling that same tune that had been stuck in my head all day to keep my hackles down.

I poured myself a pot of coffee, threw my hat on the tree, missing as usual, and plunked myself down in front of the typewriter to begin punching out the events as best as I could parse them out. The only other sound in the place was the hum of a fan somebody had left on.

A feeling came over me as I hammered away at the page. A cold draft, as if someone had walked over my grave. There was a subtle shift in the dim morning light and shadows spilled into the room like black paint. The fan stopped. I couldn’t even hear the clock ticking.

And there he was, standing over my shoulder.

Domingo Seaver.

I could only stare. I was sure I hadn’t hear a door open.

“I thought perhaps you deserved an explanation, Mr. Kolchak,” Domingo said. “You and your readers.”

“That was you in the tomb tonight, wasn’t it?”

Seaver only raised his eyebrows patiently.

“Well, I said, leaning back in my chair to affect an air of nonchalance I did not actually have. “I’m all ears, Mr. Seaver.”

“Tell me what you think you know and I will fill in the blanks.”

“Why?”

“Because it amuses me.”

“Alright,” I said, swiveling in my chair and narrowing my eyes at the strange figure standing in the dark. “Ira Couch showed incredible fortune in managing to go from nothing to a wildly successful hotelier. I think he must have made some kind of high interest business arrangement with some extremely influential party. I think he attempted to renege on his end of the deal, whatever it was, and the person to whom he was indebted burned his hotel to the ground. He still had enough pull though to raise it up again. A remarkable feat. Maybe he convinced his unknown business partner that this time he’d be good for it.”

“Or he offered something more valuable as collateral,” said Seaver.

“OK…October 8th 1843 comes around. Seems like that’s the agreed upon deadline for him to repay his loan or whatever it is. The hotel burns again. But…Couch rebuilds again. Whatever he offered his business partner this time, it must have really been something.”

“It was,” said Seaver.

“But this time Couch develops a scheme to duck his debt. He travels to Cuba….”

“And?”

“Well Mr. Seaver, there I’m a little at a loss. Whatever it was, it involves Santeria. I guess it depends on what it was Couch was dealing with. What was his collateral?”

“First, his soul,” said Seaver. “The standard contract. The second time, to extend his contract, it was the soul of every subsequent generation of his family. A precious thing, an innocent soul. But the souls of generations? Incalculable. ”

“Souls,” I said quietly, gripping the arms of my chair. “Where was I?”

“Cuba.”

“In Cuba then, he steals what the santeras call a sopera. It contains the ancestral spirits worshipped by the locals.  He seals it by some method I don’t understand.”

“Couch was a nefarious and clever sorcerer,” said Seaver. “And he knew he could hide the souls of himself and his loved ones in the glow of a trapped orischa.”

“Sure,” I said. “I imagine his debtor had trouble even approaching something like that. But what about the fire of 1871? The hotel burned along with most of the city.”

“An attempt to flush a rabbit out of hiding, Mr. Kolchak. Quite unavoidable.”

 “Alright,” I said. “Each generation of Couches defends the hiding place of the Couch souls. Feeds the trapped orischa with blood every October to keep the wolves from the door. Who was the Cuban woman who was killed?”

“I told you I wasn’t the only interested party.”

“She’d come looking for the stolen sopera.”

“And Ms. Davenport stopped her.”

There hadn’t been any sign of the killer fleeing the scene because Carol Davenport had been inside the tomb. All she had to do was hide till the coroner hauled the body off.

“Tonight, that flash. The wind. The orischa broke loose.”

“Thanks to you. Very good, Mr. Kolchak. Very impressive.”

He looked out the dark window.

“Well, you have your story, and I at last, have my payment. Fair and square, as they say.”

I looked over Seaver’s shoulder at the clock on the wall. The second hand had stopped.

“Your payment. So you’re….” It was a lot to wrap my head around. “What happens now?” I asked.

Seaber smiled and raised his eyebrows.

“Now you decide how much to publish yourself, and how much to allot to Mr. Murray’s book. Have a good day, Mr. Kolchak. Be seeing you.”

He turned and crossed the empty aisle, went to the door, and out into the hall, whistling the same tune I had this morning.

The fan began to blow.

The clock resumed its ticking, and the sun came bright through the window.

I turned back to my typewriter and fished in my pocket for his business card.

D. Seaver.

As soon as I held it up to the sunlight it went up like magician’s flash powder in my fingers.

This was intended for Kolchack’s anniversary, so as you can see, I thought I’d come up with a story for what was going on in the famous opening sequence, and an origin for his catchy whistle. Oh well. C’est la vie!