Joshua Reynolds's Blog, page 5

Psychomanteum #11

EDITORIAL

November is a liminal month. It’s the threshold between Halloween and Christmas. The days are shorter, the nights colder, and yet the period between its beginning and end is somehow impossibly long. The stalls of the Christmas market are going up in the town centre, and the pharmacist is playing holiday muzak, but the Yuletide is not here yet. The old year is dying, but the new year is yet to be born.

Though it might not seem that way from the above paragraph, I find something comforting about this transitory period. It’s like the lull before a storm. I feel as if I have all the time in the world, despite being only a few weeks from the end of the year. Like I can accomplish anything and meet any deadline.

As a consequence, this is often one of the most productive periods of my year. It’s also the part of the year where I start looking forward to slowing down, at least for a week or two. That fabled period of rest, where I won’t do any writing. Or, rather, where I don’t plan to do any writing, but probably will, because that’s just how it goes.

But work isn’t all I’ve been up to. A year or two back, I started a tradition of watching all of the Bob’s Burgers Thanksgiving episodes around this time of year. I enjoy them all, to greater and lesser degrees; ‘Dawn of the Peck’, from Season 5, is probably top of my list, just for the sheer ridiculousness of the concept, but I think ‘Thanks-Hoarding’ from Season 8 might be the best of them; it’s a nuanced look at the emotional toll the holidays can take on some folks, and I highly recommend it, if you need some holiday entertainment.

Besides my Bob’s Burgers marathon, I’ve been reading the late Brian Stableford’s wonderful series of C. Auguste Dupin novellas, starting with The Legacy of Erich Zann and culminating in The Cthulhu Palimpsest. Stableford has been one of my favourite writers for years, and these novellas hit my sweet spot of detective-meets-weird fiction. If that sounds interesting to you, I encourage you to check them out.

Also, it wouldn’t be November with the infamous turkey drop!

NEWS

This month was all ups and downs. I spent most of it working on a few last minute projects, including a new Royal Occultist story, “The Bell of Annwn”, and a new Sherlock Holmes story, “Dogges Without Wit”. I’ve also begun working on a few other, older projects that fell by the wayside some time ago; they might be salvageable, or they might not. But I’d like to give it a try.

Besides that, I chocked up a nice handful of rejections and got the go on a few other potential projects for next year. Given how nervous I’ve been about my work-schedule in 2025, the latter made up for the former. I like having jobs lined up. I like selling short stories as well, but I’ll take what I can get.

I’ve also reached a decision regarding my Ko-Fi store. Yes, I have a Ko-Fi store. Anyway, come next year, I’ll begin releasing some inexpensive short story collections, as well as individual novellas and short stories, all of which will be available as both PDF and epub. Nothing fancy, no bells and whistles. Just good stories, priced fairly.

That said, I’ll be pulling down the stuff that’s currently up in the shop come January in order to repackage some of it. So if you want a copy of any of it in its current form, you better grab it now.

New Audio –  Zombicide: Do or Die

My third Zombicide novel, Do or Die, finally gets the audiobook treatment this month. I had a huge amount of fun writing it, and I hope that comes across. Why not grab a copy, audio or otherwise, and let me know? It has a giant turtle in it!

Site Update – The Vordenburg Papers

There’s a new Baron Vordenburg story this month for subscribers – “Grave Worm”. In it, our favourite Styrian monster-hunter battles a worm of unusual size. It, and the rest of the Vordenburg tales, are free to read for subscribers (subscribing is also free).

Site Update – Miscellaneous Writing

I’ve added new entries to both Nightmare Men and Silver Screams this month, if you’d care to read them. They’re free to read, for subscribers (subscribing is also free).

MONTHLY STORY

This month’s story, “The Black Pullet”, is a favourite of mine, for several reasons. Notably it’s one of those stories I could never manage to sell, got frustrated with and popped it up on Patreon – when I had a Patreon – and immediately got several emails from editors insisting they’d have bought it, had I sent it to them. While I was tempted to point out that I had, in fact, submitted it to at least one of the individuals in question, I refrained. Publishing is a funny business, sometimes. Anyway – enjoy!

Alexandre Dumas, sitting on a low wall, tamped down his pipe and traded wary glares with the black hen. “Are you sure about this?” he rumbled. His voice, even when pitched low, rolled across the rubble-strewn plaza like the crash of a cavalry charge. He had stripped off his blue coat as the cool of evening had given way to the heat of day, and had tossed aside his hat, with its Revolutionary cockade. Sweat gleamed on his dark skin, and he used the end of his tri-coloured sash to mop his throat and the back of his neck.  

“I am almost a hundred percent certain, yes,” de Marigny said as he stroked the hen, which cocked its sharp skull and gave Dumas a glare. It was handsome as birds went, but if he had been a superstitious sort, he might’ve said it had something of the devil in it. Then, the same had been said of him, more than once. The Austrians called him ‘Schwarzer Teufel’ but only after he’d scaled a glacier to get at them.

He shaded his eyes and peered up at the sun. Sometimes, he missed the Alps. The mountains had been as cold as the devil’s left testicle, but he’d been his own man, there, despite the demotion. Bonaparte had done him a favour, though he hadn’t known it at the time. He was of equal rank with Bonaparte here in Egypt, but in some ways he was even more under the Corsican’s thumb than he had been while commanding a single squad of dragoons. In Cairo, he commanded workmen, rather than soldiers. And where was the glory in that?

He examined the latter as he tamped down his pipe. They were a mixture of locals, prisoners and soldiers on punishment detail, and all of them glared, with varying degrees of hostility, at the squad of dragoons that had escorted de Marigny here, on Citizen Pousseilgue’s orders. Bonaparte had made the former financial advisor and inveterate spy the French representative on the puppet-divan he’d set up to rule Cairo. Like many of the Corsican’s decisions since they’d reached Egypt, Dumas was fairly certain it would come back to bite him in his narrow ass. Pousseilgue was as corrupt as any Bedouin. Still, nothing motivated a man like that faster than the thought of gold, sitting unclaimed. 

At the thought of the gold, he glanced at the house he’d been supervising the repairs to. It had belonged to a Mameluke grandee, and someone on the Corsican’s staff wanted it for a billet. The previous owner had fled with Cairo’s fall, which meant his property was forfeit to the Republic.

Dumas didn’t mind, though the labour grated somewhat on his soul. It kept him out of the officer’s mess and away from the grumbling and muttering of the other officers. The Corsican already despised him, ‘Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol’ or not. The workmen had found a quantity of gold and precious gems in the house, cached in different spots throughout the structure, and Dumas knew that where there was a bit of glitter, there was likely gold aplenty. It was just a matter of finding it.

And so he’d reported to Bonaparte, hoping to ingratiate himself with the Corsican enough to get his long-delayed transfer papers signed. He missed his wife, and his children, and France. He loathed Bonaparte, and his arrogant need to emulate Alexander. More, he despised the imperial tone the expedition had taken. He’d come to Egypt to free its people from their tyrannical overlords, not to install new tyrants. At least the Mamelukes had been Muslims. The Egyptians had little enough other than their god, and no matter how hard he tried, Bonaparte’s attempt to usurp Allah was doomed to failure. There was no honour to be had in this endeavour.

Dumas sucked on his teeth for a moment, his pipe resting forgotten in one brawny fist. The hen blinked and twitched and he snorted. “I am an educated man, Citizen de Marigny, despite what you may have assumed. This business of pullets and black velvet boxes smacks of the superstitions of Saint-Domingue, rather than the product of science.”

“Superstition has much to teach us, General,” de Marigny said, frowning. The savant was a lean man, and burnt brown by the unforgiving Egyptian sun. “Sorcery is simply scientific process which has yet to be fathomed, as the Comte d’Erlette stated in the Cultes des Goules.” He paused and peered at Dumas through the blue-tinted spectacles he wore. “Have you, by chance, read that work?”

“I stopped reading fairy stories when I learned what women were, and how swords worked,” Dumas said, lighting his pipe. He eyed the scrimshawed grip of the flintlock pistol holstered haphazardly on de Marigny’s waist, and the profusion of amulets and holy symbols that dangled from the man’s neck. The savant wore a loose burnoose over his grimy trousers and waistcoat as a concession to the sun. Dumas thought perhaps that the savant should have invested in some form of head covering as well, given his insistence that a black hen would locate the remainder of the gold that Dumas had been charged with recovering for the glory of the Republic.

The thought elicited some amusement in him—a black pullet, to lead a black cockerel. That was what they called him, behind his back, his fellow generals. The Black Rooster, hot-tempered and puff-crested. The amusement faded, as he wondered whether Bonaparte had had the same thought.

The Corsican had made no bones of his distaste for Dumas, who was triply damned as far as the former was concerned—the son of a Saint-Domingue slave, heir to a title, and tall. Worse, he did not worship at the altar of Bonaparte, as Murat and the others did. The Revolution had freed all the sons and daughters of France from the need to bend knee to any deity, but too many of his peers seemed willing to fall over themselves to raise a skinny-shanked Corsican to the pedestal formerly occupied by the Papal rear.

When men lack gods, they invent their own, he thought. Murat and the others had Bonaparte. The latter had ambition. All were slaves, just as much as Dumas had been. The hen flapped its wings, nearly knocking de Marigny’s spectacles askew. Dumas grinned around the stem of his pipe. “She seems quite eager. Did you learn of this scientific sorcery of yours in this book of ghouls?”

“I learned of it here, actually,” de Marigny said, as he tried to settle the hen. It snapped its beak at him, and he yelped and stuck a bloody finger in his mouth. “I did a service for a—ah—philosopher of my acquaintance and in return he taught me several methods for mineral divination, among other things.”

“And who is this philosopher?”

“Ah—dead, I’m afraid,” de Marigny said.

Something in the way he said it pricked Dumas’ curiosity. He gazed solemnly at de Marigny for a moment, and then grunted and pushed himself to his feet. “Fine, let’s get this farce over with, shall we?” He left his coat and hat where they were, but picked up his sword and belted the sheath about his waist.

The savant made a face, but nodded. Holding the hen’s beak closed, he pulled the struggling bird close and whispered to it. Then he deposited it onto the ground with a flourish. The bird gave a hop, and a flap, and stared up at Dumas. He returned the look. The hen gave an ear-splitting squawk and then started towards the house at a quick trot, flapping its wings occasionally.

The savant waved off the dragoons, as they made to follow. “If we find it, we’ll call out, eh? Too many hens spoil the meal,” he said. None of Dumas’ workers offered to join him. He didn’t blame them. The house had that effect on men, he had learned. The Egyptians avoided even its shadow, and contorted themselves awkwardly to slink around its edges, when the sun was high. Those he could induce to enter, did so reluctantly and never for very long.

“You don’t sound as eager to fill the Republic’s coffers as I expected of a man of your reputation, General,” de Marigny said as they followed the pullet into the house. The structure was in bad shape—the walls had been, by and large, blown out into the street, and the roof had been shattered and burnt. Inside, it was ruin, reeking of sulphur and smoke, everything burned black by the force of the explosion that had claimed its integrity. The former owner had secreted a store of gunpowder in the house sometime prior to the French entrance into the city, and tried to reduce his home to a smoking ruin. For what reason, Dumas couldn’t fathom.  The Mamelukes were brave—terribly, foolishly brave; most had left their wealth where it was, on the assumption that they would return to claim it.

They’d scotched that idea, however, and broken the Mamelukes. A slight smile creased his face as he thought of the Battle of the Pyramids, as some were calling it. There’d been no pyramids that he could see, but plenty of Mamelukes. Thousands of the feisty bastards had been waiting on them as they marched towards Cairo, covered in sparkling armor, enhanced with gold and gems, over brightly colored embroidered silk jackets, armed with pistols, blunderbusses, daggers and those damnable swords, curved and perfectly balanced, atop their snorting stallions.

Dumas looked down at his own sword, with its graceful curve and the ornate pommel, shaped like the clenched claw of an eagle. He’d taken it from its owner, after his own had broken on the man’s skull. The Mamelukes had hurled themselves at the French squares, each man an Achilles in his own mind. And maybe they had been, for a time. Dumas could still taste the sand and blood, and feel the reverberations of his sabre as it connected with his opponent’s curved sword.

Blade to blade, they had danced under the hot sun, trading blows that would have sent weaker men staggering. It had been the first time that Dumas had met a man who could stand toe-to-toe with him, and he recalled it fondly as he tapped a loose rhythm on the pommel of his trophy. It had been glorious. For a moment, just a moment, he had not been a soldier, a subordinate, but a warrior. Men would remember that battle, and the clash of old and new, beneath the eyes of the ancient. Too, they would remember Dumas, or so he hoped.

“Did you hear me, General?” de Marigny said. Dumas blinked and shook his head, banishing the daydream of sand and silk and slaughter. Ash crunched beneath his boot-heels. He looked about, taking in the blackened skeleton of the house. The hen trotted just ahead of him, pecking through the ash and scratching at the floor, like any other chicken. 

“Yes,” he said. “I simply chose not to answer.” His years serving the Republic, and the various Committees, had taught him that it was best to be wary. He wouldn’t put it past the Corsican to arrange an accident. It would undoubtedly amuse him to report that his Horatius had perished in a ramshackle house, a victim of a broken neck or a fallen beam. Or maybe he would ambush him and sell him to the Bedouin, to end his life as he’d begun it, in slavery. The only thing that Bonaparte enjoyed more than winning was inflicting ignominy on his enemies, after all. At the thought, Dumas could not repress a shudder. Even after all he’d accomplished, he still dreamed sometimes of the day his own father had sold him, to buy passage to France. A man could live without glory and honour, but not freedom.

“Do you fear I’ll report you to Bonaparte’s spies?”

“I fear neither spy nor savant,” Dumas said. “I simply choose not to answer seditious questions.” He peered at de Marigny and added, “Perhaps it is you who should worry. Bonaparte grows bored with his pet scientists, as he grows bored with everyone whose services he no longer requires.”

The savant smiled, as if Dumas had said something funny. “Not me, General. Bonaparte chose me. I did not choose him. Nor has my use ended, unlike that of some others I could name.” Dumas ignored the smile and the jibe, and looked about him. There were only a few columns of light, jabbing through the collapsed sections of the roof. The rest of the ruin was in darkness, which wasn’t unusual, given how the house was angled. He’d noticed it early in the reconstruction efforts—the house was at odds with its closest neighbours, as if it sat on an unseen slope. From a distance, and from the right spot, the house looked as if it were leaning forward, like a man falling asleep. Up close, the effect was even more disturbing.

The columns of light flickered, as if something had flown between the sun and his eyes. Dumas froze, listening. He heard a rustle, and was reminded of hens stirring in a henhouse. He looked down. The pullet stared up at him. No, not at him—past him, he realized. Its eyes were fixed on a point somewhere above his head, where a series of charred beams intersected. Unconsciously, Dumas looked up. He saw nothing, save motes of char that drifted down, as if loosened by a stray breeze. He looked down, and found de Marigny examining him as intently as he had been examining the beams. The savant blinked and looked away as Dumas’ gaze fell on him. “It was a unique structure, was it not? Even now, in its current sad state of repair, you can see it. It is somehow larger within than it appears from the street. It contains infinities, you might say,” the savant said, not looking at him.

“I might, but I doubt it,” Dumas said. Then, bluntly, “The architect was either drunk or mad, or both.”

“One of those, almost certainly,” de Marigny said. He frowned. “Madness can take many forms, including an excess of clarity as opposed to confusion.” He looked at Dumas. “They say that you planned to murder Bonaparte in the desert.”

Dumas said nothing. His palm dropped the pommel of his blade. “Who says that? Name him, and I’ll challenge him this very night,” Dumas said softly.

 “Peace, peace General, I meant no disrespect,” de Marigny said quickly. He made a placating gesture. His eyes were shrewd, behind his spectacles. “It was a rumour, nothing more.”

“Rumours can kill a man, as surely as blade or bullet,” Dumas growled.

“Oh, I know, believe me,” de Marigny said. “A man can only die on the battlefield once. In Cairo, he can die a thousand times before lunch.”

Dumas smiled. But before he could speak, the hen squawked. The savant sniffed. “Ah, she’s found the spot.” The hen was stalking in a circle, head bobbing, its talons scraping strange patterns into the ash that coated the floor. Dumas sank to his haunches and shooed the pullet away. It didn’t go far. It flapped its wings and glared about challengingly. Carefully, he examined the floor. With a start, he realized that the hen’s scratching had made a perfect square. He looked at the bird, which seemed to meet his gaze mockingly. Dumas shook his head and looked back down at the floor. It was stone, and there was no crease or line to mark an opening or loose slab. He knocked on the stone with his knuckles, half-expecting to hear the echo of a hollow space, but it was solid. “There is nothing here,” he said.

“No,” de Marigny said, “Not yet.”

Dumas was about to reply, when a soft susurrus interrupted him. He stiffened as he heard the whirr of wings. More char drifted down, like a faint black snow. Something moved above him, but always at the edge of his vision. He could hear the snap of pinions and the rustle of leather. It put him in mind of rooks and bats squabbling for roosting space. “What is that?” he hissed. He peered up at the beams again, hunting for the source of the noise.

He had hunted wolves, as a young man. Once, he had cornered one of the beasts in a ruined church near Villers-Cotterets. It had crouched unmoving in the overgrown sacristy, and he had swept his gaze across it several times before it had tensed to spring, alerting him to its presence. He felt the same now as he had then. Something was above him.  Something was swooping and crawling through the shadows that had congealed in the upper reaches of the ruin. Bats, perhaps, he thought. But where were they?

“I wondered if you would hear them,” de Marigny said. Dumas looked at him as he rummaged around in his burnoose, hunting for something.

“Hear what? What is that?”

“The black winged ones,” de Marigny said. “Ah, here we are.” He held up a thin, flat lens of glass, edged in gold. As he extended it towards a stray beam of light, Dumas saw that it was scored with hundreds of thin lines and shapes, and for a moment, it put him in mind of an orrery or compass. Then the light caught it, and the thought was replaced by another, more urgent one, as the world lurched suddenly. Dumas felt momentarily sick, as if he were on the deck of a storm-tossed ship. The heat of the day was wrenched from the air all at once, and the background noise of the city went with it, drawn elsewhere. It was as if someone had drawn a veil over the world.

And then, he saw them. They clung to the beams and high places, squirming and shifting. He had the impression of leathery wings, and centipede like bodies and then he looked away, fighting to control the sudden rush of bile that rose thick and hot into his throat. Disgusted and horrified, Dumas sprang to his feet and drew his blade.

“No!” de Marigny snapped, grabbing Dumas’ wrist. The savant’s grip was shockingly strong. Dumas made to shake him off, but he heard a wheezing shriek and something with too many teeth, set into a mouth like an open blossom, struck at him, wings flapping. Before he could bring his blade up, de Marigny thrust a hand past him. An amulet dangled from the savant’s clenched fingers and the thing gave a tinny hiss and retreated in a flurry of wing-beats.

“What—?” Dumas began.

“It always pays to bring the proper papers, when travelling abroad,” de Marigny said. “They won’t harm you, General, not unless I will it, and I most certainly do not. Now, watch your feet.” Dumas, mouth dry, looked down. In the patch of stone at his feet, he saw an aperture that had not been there moments earlier. Startled, he realized that it perfectly matched the dimensions of the square that the pullet had scratched out on the floor.  It looked old, far older than the house itself, and it lacked the precision of something carved by the tools of men.  A strange smell rose upwards to wash over him and he pressed the edge of his sash over his nose and mouth.

“What in the name of the devil is that?” he croaked.

“That? That is what we are looking for, General,” de Marigny said, almost gently. “The treasure hidden at the heart of this ruin; the treasure Bonaparte desires, though he would never admit it to any save me.” He lowered his amulet and licked his lips as he peered down into the aperture. The odour emanating from it didn’t seem to bother him.

“Is this why he brought you to Egypt?” Dumas said slowly. “Before, you said you learned things from a philosopher in Cairo—was this one of those things?”

The savant’s smile was ghastly in the weird light. His grip tightened on his amulets. The winged horrors stirred restlessly, and the air was filled with the soft fluttering of wings. The pullet clucked morosely. “After you, General,” he said. He gestured, and Dumas saw that there were steps leading down into the darkness. He hadn’t noticed them before. Perhaps they hadn’t been there. Dumas gripped his sword, considering. De Marigny shook his amulet and the black-winged ones began to stir. Wings flapped and stingers clattered. He picked up the pullet and stroked it. Then, with a single swift motion, he broke the bird’s neck before it could squawk and he tossed the body into the air.

“I insist,” de Marigny said, softly as feathers drifted down and the black-winged ones fell to. Dumas didn’t watch. He had killed chickens before, and dogs, and foxes and men, but something about that moment of casual cruelty set his stomach to churning. He turned and started down. Dumas took the steps slowly. The heat of the day had been replaced by a damp chill, and he shivered slightly as he descended. The smell grew stronger and his breath frosted the air. How could it be so cold here?

“There is no heat here, no light—no true light, at any rate,” de Marigny said from behind him, as if he’d read Dumas’ mind. He was following, but slowly, warily. “We are in a crack in the wall between one world and the next. Useful things, cracks; they are invariably the perfect place to hide those things which you do not wish found.” He chuckled. “Of course, if the person you’re hiding them from knows that there’s something to look for, it’s all becomes rather moot.”

“This isn’t about gems and gold, is it?” Dumas said.

“No,” de Marigny said. “It is about empire.”

Dumas paused at the bottom of the steps. A flat stone floor, like the ground in the tidal caves he’d played in as a boy, and rough-hewn walls met his gaze. There were wooden benches and shelves lining the walls, groaning with mouldy tomes and dusty clay urns. Canopic jars, akin to the sort he’d seen tomb-robbers bartering in the Cairo market, were sharing shelf space with strange idols, and a dismantled skeleton occupied a flat table, all save for the skull, which hung from a web of thin, golden chains attached to the low ceiling. The skull rotated gently as if in a breeze. The pages of the tomes rustled and the dust stirred. He turned to meet de Marigny’s placid gaze. Behind him, he heard a sound like the stirring of sand, or the crackle of flames.

“It hasn’t changed a bit,” the savant said.

“You have been here before,” Dumas said. “What is going on here? Answer me, or—”

De Marigny’s hand flashed to his waist and he plucked the pistol from his sash and cocked it. “You want an answer? Fine—turn around. Turn around I say!” the savant barked.

Dumas did. The sound had grown louder. Something like black smoke billowed from the skull that dangled in the centre of the room. It struck the floor in a silent splash and rose up in undulating waves. Dumas’ mouth was dry, and his heart hammered in his chest. For the first time in a long time, he felt fear. “What is that?”

“He that causes despair,” de Marigny said, ‘He who lies in wait on the straightest of ways, the whisperer in darkness and the shambler in the shadows.” He laughed. “It’s a worm in the apple, and a scorpion in the boot. I brought the hen to find the door, and the cockerel to slay the watch-dog,” de Marigny said. He descended, pistol aimed at Dumas’ heart. Dumas stepped onto the floor. “Draw your talon, General. Draw your talon and strike, lest you be for the stew-pot.”

The black mass slithered forward, winnowing between the tables and shelves. Dumas caught a glimpse of things that might have been eyes or teeth, and then it was boiling towards him, like smoke caught in a flue, faster than he could track. Without thinking, he lunged forward, slashing out with his blade. It carved a silvery arc through the mass, and the stones echoed with a groan that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

It rose up and coiled about him, and in his head, he saw-what? Faces, and images, of another place and another time, broken shards of memories yet to be which slithered across his consciousness, showing him his sad fate. He saw a Sicilian prison cell, and felt the damp that would creep into his bones and drain his strength. He shuddered in the phantom coils and struck at it with his blade and fists, dispersing it like smoke. 

The serpentine shape gave way to something else, lupine perhaps or feline. It flung itself at him again, and he ducked aside, catching its side with his sword. It lashed out wildly, and he was sent staggering by a blow that left red, oozing marks across his chest. Pain seared through him as he absently touched the wound, and he gasped and stepped back as it came for him again, its shape billowing and puffing out like pollen on the wind. 

It became a rat, a bat, a falcon, and a horse, growing wings and hooves and lashing, scorpion-like tails as it whirled about him. With every blow, more shards of not-memory pierced his mind. He saw himself returned at last to France, and he saw his titles and honours stripped from him by an emperor grown fat on adulation. He saw his children grow up penniless and his friends turn their backs on him to pursue rank and glory.

He gave back before the smoke and the horrors it brought even as he hacked at it, his blows becoming wilder and more frantic. It spun about him like a dust-devil, coming at him from every direction at once, clawing at his determination, at his courage, with its hateful whispers.

It told him that he would die in bed. That he would be forgotten, but that Bonaparte would be remembered forever. Dumas would have no statues, and he would be lost to history’s shadow.The words hammered at him, harder than any blow he’d ever received.His back touched the wall of the chamber and he slashed out, bisecting it as it galloped towards him. It dissipated and reformed, taking the shape of a man, a Mameluke, in swirling robes and jangling mail, with a sword in one hand.

He spat blood as it swung its blade challengingly. The images faded and he shook his head to clear it, and as he did so, he smiled. For though it had shown him terrible things, it had not shown him the one thing he feared most. “No glory, eh,” he croaked. “No honour, you say? How will they take these things from me? I am Dumas. I scaled the Alps and climbed the Pyramids. I have fought kings and popes and knights. I was born a slave and I will die a free man, whatever else they do to me. Come,” he growled, gesturing. “Come!”

The smoky blade slashed at him and Dumas roared and stamped forward, cutting at the apparition’s head. His blade chopped down through its own, into its head and passed through the entirety of its body before striking the stone floor in a shower of sparks.

At the sound of metal striking stone, the smoky mass seemed to quail, and his mind began to clear. Dumas, thinking quickly, swung his blade out and struck the wall. He’d heard it said, though he could not say where, that demons could not stand the sound of silver bells. His sword was neither a bell nor silver, but it seemed to be having a similar effect. He didn’t pause to question the why of it. Instead, he swatted the floor before him, and the mass squirmed backwards. Dumas grinned mirthlessly.

He followed it, striking the floor every so often to drive it before him, like a hunter driving a fox. It retreated back the way it had come, and he bellowed at it to hurry it along. It slid away from him and slithered upwards back into the skull, which shook, as if in fear.

“You beat it,” de Marigny said. “I hoped you would.” Dumas turned with a retort on his lips. The savant still held his pistol however, and the retort died on Dumas’ lips. “You were correct, General. I have been here before. I learned much at the feet of the Mohammedan sorcerer who owned this residence, but not, alas, as much as I wished. He drove me out, when I questioned him once too often. He had the art to make himself a caliph, or greater, even, but he was content to be rich and fat, and idle. Demons brought him gold and women and wine, when they could have brought him kingdoms. He hoarded eldritch wisdoms the way a miser hoards coins—any one of which could elevate a man to a king.”

“Is that what you promised the Corsican, then?” Dumas asked. “We weren’t after gold, were we? Bonaparte sent you here to find this place, so that he might add devils to his arsenal.”

“Devils, djinn, diabolical texts—it’s all science by another name,” de Marigny murmured. “He wants to be emperor, you know.” His eyes flashed strangely behind his spectacles.

Dumas grunted. “It doesn’t require sorcery to see that.”

“No, it doesn’t. But what he wants, and what I want are two different things,” de Marigny said. He stepped off of the stairs and into the chamber.  The skull twitched in its bindings. Dumas could hear the scrape and shuffle of the winged things as they crept and fluttered about the opening above. The hen hadn’t lasted long. “He wanted you dead, you know. He leapt at the opportunity, when I requested your participation. I told him you would die fighting the shambler in the shadows. You would be another sacrifice, like the pullet. But I lied.”

“Why?”

“Bonaparte is…not trustworthy,” de Marigny said. “His only loyalty is to his own ambition.” Dumas burst out laughing, and the savant frowned. “You know that is so, as well as I!” he snarled. “He would take my secrets for his, as soon as I had done as he’d wished.” He shrugged. “And at any rate, the people of this arid land would not follow him, no matter how many devils I afflict them with. He is not the leader they want. He is too sly, too haughty, too…”

“White,” Dumas offered. He wiped blood from his face. “In the desert, the Bedouin thought I was Bonaparte. So too did the Mamelukes. They were quite disappointed when they found out otherwise.” 

The savant licked his lips. “I offer you a chance, general. I can make you a king, here. A true king. Egypt could be again what it once was, between us. I have watched you, and listened to tales of your heroism. Here, now, you could be what you were always intended to be, what men like Bonaparte have ever kept from you.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

“I? I get a king, and a kingdom,” de Marigny said. He circled Dumas, the pistol never wavering. “The wealth of Egypt to fund my researches, a continent of secrets to plunder at my will,  and all this here, in this crooked house, which should have been mine, had not my master been so short-sighted.” The savant smiled thinly. “Think about it, General. Your wife a queen, your children royalty, a land to mould in your image and Bonaparte humbled before you.”

“Why me?”

“Why not you? The best general, the best man, the hero of Tyrol and the hero of the Pyramids…a worthy king, that man.” The savant looked around, as if nervous. “Consider it, General, but be quick. We do not have much time. We must be out of this chamber before the sun sets, otherwise we may not leave at all.” He held up the thin disk of scratched glass he had used to transport them to this twilight world, as if for emphasis. “Consider my offer, but swiftly!”

And Dumas did. He thought about it. And as he thought, he saw the deadly shadow begin to creep from its skull once more, like a wary cat. He heard the rustle of abominable wings above him. He thought about what the shadow had showed him, about what might await him. It was a bad death, that.

Then, he thought about why he had come to Egypt. He thought about why he’d fought, and bled. Bonaparte might have forgotten the Republic and its values the minute he set foot on foreign shores, but Dumas had not, and never would. He looked at de Marigny. “I came to free Egypt. Not to conquer it.”

The savant grimaced. He raised his pistol. “Then I will have to take my chances with the Corsican. I will not be denied my due.”

“No, you will not,” Dumas said. Faster than de Marigny could fire, Dumas flicked the tip of his blade up, and hooked the amulet around the savant’s neck, tearing it free. It clattered across the floor, into the shadows.

The sound of wings grew loud in the chamber and de Marigny’s eyes widened behind his spectacles. “No!” he screeched. He made to fire at Dumas, but was distracted by the flock of winged things that burst into the chamber. He twisted around as the creatures swirled about him like leaves caught in a strong wind and his pistol barked. Dumas ducked low and snatched up the disk of glass from where de Marigny had dropped it in his panic, gripping it tightly. He hurled himself towards the stairs, bounding up them as the flying creatures flooded into the chamber, hissing and clattering. De Marigny screamed, but Dumas did not look back.

Sword in hand, he exploded out of the aperture and stumbled back the way they had come. More of the winged devils were waiting for him, mandibles clacking as they slithered from their perches and swooped towards him. He could see other shapes, fouler and larger, moving through the shadows. Without the protection of de Marigny’s amulet, he was fair game. He needed to leave, and quickly. Hastily, he sought out a watery drizzle of pale not-quite sunlight, and thrust the disk of glass into it, tilting it as de Marigny had, so that all of the strange scratches caught the light.

For a moment, he feared it wouldn’t work. Then, heat and sound crashed down on him, and he was back in Cairo, de Marigny’s final scream still echoing in his ears.  He looked around, breathing heavily, his blood still running down his sweaty limbs, his clothes torn. He wondered how he would explain de Marigny’s disappearance. Then, he wondered whether or not his survival would encourage the Corsican to send him home at last, or resort to more earthly means in dispatching him. His grip on his sword tightened.

He looked down at the floor, where the aperture had been. A crack, de Marigny had called it. He looked up, and thought he caught a subtle movement in the shadows. He doubted de Marigny had made it to the amulet in time. He would see this place torn down before the next morning, and any ghosts or devils in its corners sent running. Whatever else happened, whatever else became of him, he was free to do that much, at least.

He looked down at the glass disk in his hand. He dropped it and tread on it, grinding it into powder. Bonaparte would have to earn his empire the hard way, without the help of sorcery, or Alexander Dumas.

Then, without a backwards glance, he went out to meet his fate. 

In Closing

That’s it for this month. If you made it this far, thanks for giving it a read and possibly even subscribing. I hope you enjoyed this back-to-basics newsletter. Check back next time for more new releases (hopefully) and a new (old) monthly story.

But for now, to paraphrase the estimable Carnacki – out you go!

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Psychomanteum #10

EDITORIAL

For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ’s birth, there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles—breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.

– Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

I’ve always been an autumn guy at heart. I think most authors are, if they’re of a certain inclination. It comes with the territory. When that first whisper of autumn teases the air, I feel the hairs on my neck prickle and there’s a lightness in my step. An excitement. Red, dead leaves crunching underfoot as grey skies portend thunderous nights.

There’s a magic in the twilight months between summer and winter. The days swell with eerie half-light and the nights glow with the radiation of a thousand-thousand black and white television sets, tuned to creaky graveyards and rubber bats.

I love this season. It invigorates the creative urge in me unlike any other time. And I cannot help but celebrate it in the proper manner, by the proper rituals. Those ancient rites of paper and reel, where I delve into the dark, and to excess.

By which I mean I watch a lot of horror films and read a lot of horror novels, and, yes, listen to a lot of horror audio. I infuse my days with fears old and new.

This year, I watched mostly old favourites – the silver screams of Universal and RKO, the technicolour nasties of Hammer, Amicus and their ilk, and a scattering of others. I reacquainted myself with Carl Kolchak and David Norliss. I cheered for the Killdozer and shivered at the howls that echoed along the dark convolutions of Boggy Creek. I watched a few new films as well – The Dyatlov Pass Incident (2013), The Embalmer (1965) and The Queen of Spades (1949) to name three.

My reading was of the comfortable variety as well. I reread King’s Salem’s Lot for the first time in years, and found it as wonderful as ever. I truly think it’s one of the best modern vampire novels. I also read Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October, another hoary old tradition from my youth. Thirty-one chapters, corresponding to the thirty-one days of October – what could be more perfect? Other literary treats included Bradbury’s From the Dust Returned, and Jonathan Raab’s excellent duology of novellas, The Crypt of Blood and The Mausoleum of Gore, both of which I highly recommend.

Listening-wise, well, I once again indulged in the wonderful BBC adaptions of An American Werewolf in London and Salem’s Lot. I also enjoyed the recent triptych of Hellboy audios, Hellboy: A Plague of Wasps, Lobster Johnson: The Proteus Club and Hellboy and the BPRD: The Goddess of Manhattan.

I also, for reasons that escape me, found myself watching a lot of Minecraft videos where unfortunate players are pursued by wendigos, Sirenhead and various other horrors. I don’t know how I fell down that particular rabbit-hole, but there we are. There’s something soothing about their screams of terror.

Anyway, as for tonight, All Hallows Eve itself, I’ll be doing the usual – handing out candy to what seems like an ever-increasing number of trick-or-treaters and watching Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein with my daughter.

Apparently she’s an autumn person as well. Funny, that.

NEWS

October is always a busy month for me. Lots of markets open up for submissions, and lots of deadlines. It’s that last push before the Christmas holidays. I spent the month working on short stories, and some essays, and attempting to scrounge up paying work for next year. Being a freelance writer is a bit like walking a knife-edge, even at the best of times. Either you’ve got too much work or too little, and there’s rarely a happy medium.

Regardless, work needs doing. Time needs filling. Luckily, I have plenty of ideas of late. At the moment, I’ve got about nineteen stories out on submission. Two have been shortlisted, and the deadlines for most of the rest closed this month or last. I’m already working on stories for 2025 sub deadlines, but I might send out a few more before the end of 2024.

It feels good to be productive again, and here’s hoping it lasts.

New Audio – Gaslight Ghouls: Uneasy Tales of Sherlock Holmes

The most recent instalment of the long-running Gaslight… series of Sherlock Holmes anthologies is now available as an audio book, narrated by Kevin Green. I mention it because I have a story in this one: “A Killing Thought” finds Holmes and Watson revisiting an old case in order to combat a new foe, with grisly results. Grab it from Audible!

New Interview – Jordan Sorcery

I was recently interviewed by the wonderful Jordan Sorcery. We discussed my time with Black Library, the End Times and a few other things. Give it a listen on YouTube if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

New Kickstarter – Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1887 & 1888

I’m pleased to say that I have stories in two forthcoming Sherlock Holmes anthologies from Belanger Books, Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1887 and 1888, now on Kickstarter. My stories, “The Adventure of the Third Sketch” and “The Adventure of the Two Mudlarks”, see Holmes up against, respectively, a malevolent force haunting an old mill and a murderous mudlark. I really enjoyed writing both of them, and I hope folks enjoy reading them. Give the Kickstarter a look – and maybe throw some cash their way!

New Novel – A Bitter Taste: A Daidoji Shin Mystery

My newest Legend of the Five Rings novel, A Bitter Taste, should now be available in print in the UK, as well as the USA. As I said before, I’m quite proud of this one, and I hope you’ll give it – and the rest of the series – a try! Whether it’s the last in the series or not, I had a lot of fun writing these, and I hope folks had fun reading them. Grab a copy here.

New Short Story – “An Indefinite Kingdom”

I’ve got a new short story featuring reluctant folklorist, Artemis Whitlock, out this month, courtesy of the Belanger Books anthology, Alone on the Borderland. In it, she runs afoul of a strange game of ‘Hare’ and an odd turf maze. Grab a copy from Amazon today. And, for those interested, Artemis previously appeared in the most recent issue of Ghosts & Scholars, which you can also still grab – though supplies are limited.

Newsletter Update – Psychomanteum

As you might be able to tell, I’ve given Psychomanteum a bit of a tweak in the presentation department. Nothing major, but I think I’ve got it to where subscribers can read it via email now, rather than having to click through to the site. I don’t think it makes much difference myself, but I know there are some among you who prefer not to have to take that extra step. It’ll be limited to just the newsletter for the time being, but I might extend to the subscriber-only posts in the future.

Site Update – The Vordenburg Papers

There’s a new Baron Vordenburg story this month for subscribers – “The Toymaker of Szentendre”. In it, our favourite Styrian monster-hunter encounters a malicious toy or twenty. It, and the rest of the Vordenburg tales, are free to read for subscribers (subscribing is also free).

Site Update – Miscellaneous Writing

I’ve added new entries to both Nightmare Men and Silver Screams this month, if you’d care to read them. They’re free to read, for subscribers (subscribing is also free).

MONTHLY STORY

This month’s story is “A Mote of Black Memory”. It originally appeared in 2015, in The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper Stories. I enjoyed writing this one, if only because I got to name-check one of Fritz Leiber’s nastier villains. The story owes a good deal to the writings of both Leiber and Robert Bloch, as keen-eyed readers will note. If nothing else, I’ve never been shy about showing off my influences. Enjoy!

“De Castries, of course, had it by the right end with his seminal tract,” Bidwell said, as he scratched his chalk across the brick wall of the courtyard. He’d been at it for twenty minutes, according to the pocket watch in Goode’s hand. “Megapolisomancy is mostly occult theory, but a keen-eyed student can follow the paths between the paragraphs, so to speak. Amongst all the anti-Semitism and metageometry there are a few kernels of solid, reliable fact in the old fraud’s theories.”

“Such as?” Goode asked, as he snapped the pocket watch closed and slipped it back into the pocket of his frayed and faded waistcoat. He looked around nervously. Posters for Smiths Crisps and Blue Band Margarine warred for wall space in the courtyard with advertisements for Levy and Franks Licensed Caterers and a number of gaudy adds for hosiery. From an open window somewhere above, a record-player spat Clarence and Spencer Williams’ ‘Royal Garden Blues’ into the night. Voices rose and fell, bouncing from building to building in an off-putting fashion.

For those of a sensitive disposition, the East End of London was a sump of bad, black thoughts and evil emanations, even now, in the year of our lord 1920. It had been such since the day the Saxons had begun to drain the marshy ground just outside the walls of the City of London to lay its foundations. It had always been a place of chaos, unearthly influence, madness and death. Even now, with most of the slums a thing of the past thanks to a recent flurry of rebuilding, a strange pall hung over the area, fogging the senses and loosening the morals of those who dwelt there. Or so it felt to Goode, who pulled the edges of his coat tighter about himself. I want to go home, he thought morosely.

“Cities, my dear fellow, are aware. Oh not as we understand awareness, but it’s there all the same. In every brick and every cobble, memories are contained. Moments in time, trapped like insects in amber. London remembers, Goode. It knows all. It sees all, through the eyes of its inhabitants. Every person in this pile is a part of a vast network; they–we–make up London’s mind. What we see, what happens to us, London remembers. But until we learn how to listen, we cannot share in its accumulated wisdom.” Bidwell stepped back and examined the marks he’d made. “London hoards its secrets jealously, Goode. It holds them close, hiding them in rumor, hearsay and folktale. But, we shall prise them forth.”

To Goode the marks looked like nothing so much as a mass of numerical gibberish, but he knew his companion well enough by now to know that to venture such an opinion would be unappreciated at best and foolhardy at worst. Bidwell had a temper. It was one of the reasons he had been unceremoniously booted out of the Society for Psychical Research two years before. “You’ve figured it out then? How to listen, I mean?” he said. The quicker Bidwell got to the point, the quicker Goode could go home.

Not that home was much better than here, but it least it wasn’t in Whitechapel. The West End wasn’t much cleaner, but the ambiance was more to Goode’s taste. Why he’d let Bidwell talk him into coming out, on a night like this, he didn’t know.

Only you do, so stop lying to yourself, he thought. He owed Bidwell. Not as much as he once had, but even so…a debt was a debt. And Goode always paid his debts. It was easier that way, on the mind and soul. He looked up, at the boarded windows above, and the sagging slates of the nearby rooftops. He could hear stray dogs snuffling nearby, and rats scampering through the rubbish that choked the gutters. Who in their right mind would want to hear what a place like Whitechapel had to say?

Bidwell sniffed. “Obviously. Otherwise we would not now be standing in the East End at the wrong end of midnight, now would we?” He looked at Goode. “How are you feeling?” He tapped the side of his head. “Everything shipshape in the old melon?”

Goode frowned and rubbed his head. “If you thought otherwise, would I be here?”

“Now now, no need to be snippy, old thing. I’m just checking that your receptors are at peak sensitivity, what?” Bidwell said. He bounced the chalk on his palm. “Don’t want to have another incident, do we? Not like that business in Shaftsbury Avenue, eh?”

Goode swallowed and looked away. “No,” he said. Don’t think about it, he thought, don’t, don’t, don’t. Let the past keep itself to itself. Goode had enough problems in the here and now. And one of those problems was looking at him expectantly.

“So, I’ll ask again…how’s the gray matter?” Bidwell was smiling, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Goode sighed and shivered beneath his pea coat.

“It’s fine,” he said. After this, we’re done, he thought. He would never say it out loud. Bidwell might disagree, and he didn’t know what he’d do then. It wasn’t just that Bidwell was bigger than he was, though that was part of it. Bidwell was stronger in other ways.

“That’s good to hear, Goode.” Bidwell laughed. “I say, ‘good’, ‘Goode’…ain’t that a corker?” He stuffed the chalk into the pocket of his checked waistcoat and shook his head. “Any time you’re ready.”

“Ready for what?” Goode said. “You still haven’t said why you’ve dragged me out here. Only that you needed my – my sensitivity.” He nearly choked on the word. That was what the members of the Society for Psychical Research called it. He had a mind like a sponge, capable of soaking up all sorts of things, from all sorts of places. Most of them unpleasant. He looked around. “Why here, of all places? You know what places like this do to me.” He ran his hands through his thinning hair. “How they make me feel…”

“Oh buck up, Goode. We all must make sacrifices in the name of science,” Bidwell said. “And that is why I brought you here tonight. Science. Proof incontrovertible that de Castries’ methodology was not flawed, that the city around us is a repository of human experience and history, more so than any dusty book or yellowing newspaper. You, my friend, are a trowel and now I shall use you to dig.”

“Dig for what?” Goode demanded, letting a hint of exasperation creep into his voice.

“The past,” Bidwell said. He gestured to the ground. “The Apaches of North America consider the past to be a well-worn trail. But it is an invisible one, for all those remember it are mortal, and prone to—well—dying. Thus, the past-trail must be marked, with stories, songs, place-names. Wisdom, they say, sits in places. Place-memory, as my former compatriots in the Society would say.” He smiled. “There are many stories about this place, layered over one another like clay over stone. But one story stands head and shoulders above them all…”

Goode felt a chill. “No,” he murmured, drawing the word out. Bidwell chuckled.

“Oh come now, old man. We’ve seen worse, haven’t we? Besides, trauma anchors a memory better than anything. And what was he, but a living trauma?”

“I am not going diving in the spiritual sea, to hunt for Jack the Ripper,” Goode said. He shook his head. “No, I won’t do it.” Ghosts were bad enough, as he’d learned at Shaftsbury Avenue—don’t think about it!—but the ghost of a murderer?

“You will, I think,” Bidwell said. “Besides, it will be easy. Whoever he was, he’s buried in a shroud of ink and rumor. Every story, every bawdy song, they all crystallize about him, about the idea of him, holding him in place.” Bidwell laughed and tapped the side of his head. “Those stories, Goode, were what started my line of inquiry. There were so many—some whispered that the Ripper was preventing a horror unlike any other, sacrificing the few for the many. Others said that he was possessed by some terrible power, a god of razors and sharp things, which demanded blood sacrifice.” He laughed. “But the tales that most tweaked my ear were those that said the Ripper was a student of the occult, and had found the formula for immortality in the gin-soaked guts of back-alley comfort women.”

“Bidwell…” Goode said, pleadingly.

Bidwell shook his head. “As I said, stories. And they did not end with the murders, no. Even now, new stories sprout like mushrooms. Jack is all things to all men, a monster for all seasons. All the fears of the city made manifest. Oh yes, the past is well-fertilized here, Goode. And we shall reap its bounty.”

“What are we even looking for?” Goode protested.

“I thought I’d made that obvious,” Bidwell sniffed. “The truth, man. The ur-story. With my formulas, and your sensitivity, we shall peel back the layers of this onion, to reveal the core truth. With that in hand, we shall have proof of my theorems. Imagine it, Goode, imagine all that we can learn, all of the great secrets of London, there for the taking. We shall be voyagers in the sea of history, overthrowing old certainties and abolishing the lies of established wisdom.” He made a fist. “London guards its secrets, but we shall slay the dragon and loot the hoard!”

“Very pretty,” Goode said.

“Is that a hint of acid in your voice, Goode? I hope you’re not thinking of backing out,” Bidwell said, softly. There was a tincture of menace to his words, and for a moment, Goode wondered what the other man would say if he said yes. Bidwell had a temper, yes, but even he wouldn’t attempt to force Goode to use his gift, surely.

He hesitated, considering, remembering Shaftsbury Avenue. With a sigh, he shook his head. “Step back, please,” he said, in resignation. “I must have space, and quiet.”

Bidwell smiled like a gleeful child. “Wonderful. I knew I could count on you, old man,” he said, as he stepped back, hands behind his back.

Carefully, Goode emptied his mind, shooing out stray thoughts and idle whimsies. It required complete concentration to open his inner eye. The ‘spirit-eye’, as his fellows in the Society called it. To peer through it was to peer into the unfettered spaces between one world and the next, and a slip in his concentration could have painful, if not disastrous consequences. He pressed his fingertips together in front of his face and relaxed the rest of his body, focusing all of his tension into his stiffened fingers.

He closed his eyes, and sucked in several deep, cleansing breaths. He felt the telltale pulse in his head, like the contraction of some dormant organ, and felt a vibration shudder through him as his third eye blinked blearily, and then focused on the world before it. Everything became soft at the edges and more vibrant as his senses expanded to fill the void left by his thoughts and physical sight.

Little by little, the hues of the world around him, the greys and blacks and browns of the courtyard, the deep blues and purples of the night, all blended and flowed into one another like water-colours. Everything became porous and gossamer and through his inner eye he could see the dim shapes of past moments flickering about like moths circling a flame—the afterimages of the ka of those who’d passed through this place burned dully, like spots on his retinas.

The Ka, or Odic Force, as Baron Von Reichenbach referred to it, was a force which permeated all living things, to greater or lesser degrees. But more than that, the Ka was a psychic footprint. Where it passed, it left a trail, marking the history of its owner. Memories of people, Goode thought. Some were brighter than others, and some guttered like matches in a breeze. Bidwell’s burned steadily—he was fat with the stuff of life, was Bidwell.

Goode swept his gaze over the courtyard, looking for something, anything, to give Bidwell. Some scrap of black memory, anchored to these stones, just to satisfy his hunger for knowledge. But as he looked, he noticed a pall hanging over everything. For an instant, he was put in mind of what a hare must feel, as the fox closes in. Was it just the East End, making him feel this way? Or something else—Bidwell’s theorems, perhaps, causing some strange resonance in the psychical plane.

A whiff of sensation caught his attention and he turned. There was something else in the courtyard, something dark. He found his gaze drawn to a corner, where something huddled. He made a strangled sound, and heard Bidwell say, “What is it?”

Goode said nothing. The huddled shape was just that—it wasn’t a body, as such, but more the impression of a body. The absence of a life, a vague smudge where a human soul might once have been, the fading ashes of Ka. And it was not alone. Something else, reminiscent of oil spreading across water in a hundred different directions, rose up around it, as if his attentions, or perhaps Bidwell’s theorems, had stirred it up.

Goode’s heart sped up, rattling his ribs like a bird in a cage. The air around the spreading darkness looked almost infected, and he felt sick, staring at the pulsing un-colours that shone through the cracks in the world. The darkness spilled upwards, pouring into the shape of…something. It was long and lean and angled wrong, not like a body, but a shadow, a reflection in distorted glass.

It paused, looming over the huddled shape. It glanced over one shoulder. Eyes like raw, red wounds met his from across the courtyard, only they were bigger than the courtyard, bigger even than stars and staring right at him. There was no face that went with those terrible eyes, merely an odour of urgency and alien eagerness. A panting, hungry musk pawed at his ka idly and sent shivers of revulsion through him. He heard, or perhaps felt, a querulous grunt that seemed to echo through the hollow spaces of him, and then it turned.

From the crown of the old-fashioned top-hat to the surprisingly pristine spats, the apparition that faced Goode was every inch the blood-thirsty Victorian bogeyman that Bidwell had made him find. Though no one had ever really seen Saucy Jack, everyone knew what he looked like regardless. A long cloak hung from its shoulders and its hands were hidden beneath white cotton gloves, just like a proper gentleman. But there was nothing gentlemanly about the leer on its face – that face, oh God, that face – or the inhuman hunger that burned in its eyes.

It was every artist’s rendering and heated witness account come bounding to life, like a tiger out of the tall grass. The air around Goode stank of blood and pain. The cloak rustled, as if in an unfelt wind, and the shadowy edges of it seemed to grab the walls and it stretched towards him, swallowing the light as it came.

Goode took a step back. He had seen such things before, though never with such clarity. Bidwell’s formulae, he realized. The metageometry of the infamous de Castries, chalked on the walls, manipulating the flow of the city, focusing what was diffuse into concentrated form. They had not revealed the truth, or perhaps they had, and like a wound growing gangrenous fiction had become fact. Regardless, the Ripper was here and it was not a man, it was an absence of humanity. “Bidwell…” Goode whispered.

“What is it?” Bidwell asked, voice harsh with eagerness. “What do you see? Describe it to me, man!” Goode’s mouth was dry, and he couldn’t work up the spit to answer. The world quivered at the edges, like the pages of book caught in a strong wind. The sounds and smells of the East End, as it had been, when the flesh and blood primogenitor of the idealized and nightmarish facade coming towards him had stalked through cobbled cul-de-sacs. Like birds rising before the approach of a cat, the sound of carriage wheels and the stink of smog and poverty struck Goode’s senses like hammer blows.

The discordant sounds and images were nothing more than the lashing of its tail, the padding of its paws through the tall grass, but no less potent for all that. Wisdom sits in places, he thought. But what horrible wisdom was this, which lurked in an East End courtyard? He shoved his hands out in a useless gesture of warding. “N-no, go away,” he whined. “Go away, stop looking at me, go away…”

It watched him, head cocked, grin impossibly wide. It was an animal’s grin, displaying not so much cheerfulness as allowing for the proper appreciation of the number and length of the displayer’s teeth. I am here, it seemed to say, You came looking and here I am. Goode fought to control his breathing. It wasn’t real – couldn’t be real. It was just a memory, a mote of black memory, caught in the weft of history, but he could hear the click of its shoes on the cobbles and the hiss of its breath as it sauntered towards him out of the collective psyche of the past. No man had ever breathed like that.

But the Ripper wasn’t a man. Not anymore. London only knew what its inhabitants knew, what the people who made up its vast, heaving mind knew and what they knew was that no man could have done what the Ripper did, and so the Ripper was not a man. Goode wanted to scream, but the sound died in his throat. Bidwell was speaking rapidly, shaking him, trying to catch his attention, but he couldn’t, didn’t dare, look away.

In the watery quiver of the air around the thing, Goode could see gaslight streets and crawling fog. A London that-was, or never-was, depending how literally you took Dickens and Conan Doyle. Where the shadow of the Ripper stretched, things warped and changed, becoming something out of Sax Rohmer. Not history as it had been, but how it was remembered by those who had survived it, even as Bidwell had said.

“What are you seeing, Goode? Is it him? Have you found him?” Bidwell said, more loudly now, almost shouting. “What does he look like?”

Goode shook his head. “Not…not him,” he croaked, trying to look away, but unable. The Ripper stalked closer, wavering like a mirage, sometimes there, sometimes not, but drawing steadily closer. A demented flaneur, straight from Baudelaire’s darkest scribbling. The blade in its hand became a butcher’s knife, a scalpel, an athame, the gleam of steel fading to the dull gray of stone or obsidian, before shimmering silver anew. “It’s not him,” he moaned, digging at his eyes with the heels of his palms.

Bidwell caught his shoulder. “Tell me what you see, man,” he barked. “You see something—what is it? Who is it?”

“It’s nothing,” Goode repeated. He said it again and again, chanting the word like a mantra, hoping that if he said it enough, the Ripper would simply burst like a soap bubble and vanish. He felt cold, and his skin was clammy. His heart thudded in his chest, and the gaps between the paving cobbles at his feet ran red. He could hear someone moaning, and thought that it was him. The cries spiralled up, drawn in the Ripper’s wake like feathers sifted from the flapping wings of a seabird.

The Ripper opened its mouth, revealing a cavernous red maw of jagged teeth. Its shape bent at right angles, stretching to fill the limits of his vision. Its cloak flapped around it like the wings of a flock of ravens, its face a foggy nothing, pierced through by hell-bright eyes and that too-wide smile, a smile wide enough and deep enough to swallow London itself. Fingers like meat-hooks tore through the dark places of Goode’s soul, and teeth snapped together with greedy aplomb.

He would be eaten alive, from inside out. He wouldn’t leave a ghost behind when he died, because the Ripper was going to eat that first and hollow him out. Goode thrashed, trying to free himself from its gaze, but the trap only tightened and a moan escaped his lips. He staggered beneath the weight of its attentions.

The Ripper was all around him, filling the courtyard. It was the courtyard, and the East End and perhaps the city itself, and every pain and indignation its inhabitants had endured. London remembers, Goode thought and giggled. He felt hands on him, shaking him, but he ignored them.

The knife shot forward and all of the air whooshed out of him. There was a dull ache in his belly, where the blade had entered, and he felt—blade whistling as it carved a red loop across quivering flesh—ill. He felt hot and cold—eyes like lamps swept over his face as a smile like a crescent moon stretched wide over a featureless expanse of nightmare shadow—and exhausted.

There was something in his head, like an itch he couldn’t scratch. Out of the corner of his eye, under the surface his thoughts, he could see—blood, spattering across brick—things and hear—a man screamed, high and shrill as a shark’s grin was reflected in his bulging eyes—voices and he tried to thrust the heels of his hands into his eyes, to rub out the images that sprang unbidden into his mind, but he couldn’t.

He—red, painting the air in a curlicue—closed his eyes and—the athame whistled, nearly separating a head from a neck—gasped out prayers. He curled up, gagging as the hot, sour taste of blood filled his mouth. He heard a whimper, and his eyes peeled open, to see Bidwell, on the ground. Bidwell, torn from his flesh by his—the Ripper’s—hands. Goode saw that his hands were all red, and he wanted to scream but he couldn’t.

The Ripper’s grin stretched wider and wider, so that its head seemed ready to split in two as it gazed down at him. I feed London, and London feeds me, something whispered, deep in Goode’s mind. Stories begetting stories. The Ripper was the East End, and the East End was the Ripper. That was the truth of it, two names, inextricably linked. This is what I am, now. This is what I have always been, and will be, as long as these stones live. This is my temple, and I am god, as Mithras, Bacchus and a hundred others before me.

I am London, and London is me, and my secrets are not for you.

Goode stared up at it, waiting. The Ripper’s grin was a slice of pearly white across the black, as, with a tip of its tall hat, it turned away, back into the black past from which it had come. He heard its footsteps fade, taking with it the clamour of London-that-was.

Goode closed his eyes, and began to cry.

In Closing

That’s it for this month. If you made it this far, thanks for giving it a read and possibly even subscribing. I hope you enjoyed this back-to-basics newsletter. Check back next time for more new releases (hopefully) and a new (old) monthly story.

But for now, to paraphrase the estimable Carnacki – out you go!

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Blind Man – Laban Shrewsbury

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Werewolf of London (1935)

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Psychomanteum #9

EDITORIAL

Let me tell you a secret: I hate interviews.

Oh, I’m happy to do them – I enjoy doing them! I did one just recently that I had a lot of fun with. But I hate having done them. I can’t stand the sound of my own voice (I also can’t stand to look at photos of myself). I wince at every joke, I squirm at every comment made in the heat of the moment – funny or not, accurate or otherwise. At times, I’m almost psychopathically impulsive; I’m told that makes me a delight to interview, because I’ll just spout off entertainingly, and at length, about the topic or topics in question.

I’d like to think it’s because I’m a storyteller by nature. A yarn-spinner. I could be fancy and call myself a raconteur, but – eh. In that, I suspect that I’m more like Falstaff than Mark Twain. ‘I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men’.

A therapist might say that I overcompensate for my anxieties by presenting a manufactured persona; someone more obviously interesting than myself. All I know is that despite having lived what I think is an interesting life, I am, myself, largely boring. I’m decidedly routine-orientated, as my old school counsellor used to say. Work, sleep, repeat. As Bishop Berkeley might have put it, I persist – but do not exist – save when I am perceived.

Interviews tend to bring my worries in this regard to the fore. When someone kindly takes the time to interview me, for whatever reason, I strive to be witty and entertaining and, most of all, interesting, because interesting people sell books. These days, one must perform as well as publish, lest one perish.

Yet I’m always left with the haunting sense that I wasn’t interesting enough – or, worse, too interesting. That I might offend or hurt a potential reader with my garrulousness. Or worse, that I come across as farcical and, like Falstaff, a figure of ridicule. That in performing, I have opened myself up to that most dreaded of condemnations…that I am unprofessional.

I fear that word like no other. Because there’s some truth in it. I’m not as professional as I’d like to be; I talk too often about grievances, about money – about stuff like this. I’m not slick or media-savvy or calculating – I’m just me. And sometimes I have the nagging suspicion that’s not enough.

Or maybe that’s all a load of old cobblers, and I’m just overthinking it.

Anyway, tldr; I did an interview. It should be out soon. Now, on to this month’s news!

NEWS

This month I’ve been coming to grips with not having any active commissions – no deadlines, in other words. So, obviously, I went out and found some. I wrote a handful of short stories for various submission periods that were coming to a close. I also wrote two new Baron Vordenburg tales for the site, and started on a third.

I’m tempted to try and do this for the next few months – at least until the new year. It’s nice not to have a novel deadline breathing down my neck, thought I could do without the accompanying anxiety. That old treacherous sense that this might be the last, buddy-boy – you’re old news now, champ, keeps rising to the surface.

Still, nothing for it but to keep plugging away. I’m not done yet. I still need to finish that fakakta Aztec mummy story, after all.

New Short Story – “The Hounds of Zeus”

Gypsum Sound Tales has released the newest issue of Yabblins, which includes my alternate history/steampunk/science fantasy story, “The Hounds of Zeus”. It’s set in the same world as my Ulrich Popoca stories, and finds British agent Francesca Felluci battling pirates, harpies and more in the skies of the Mediterranean. Grab a copy from Amazon today!

New Short Story – “A Crooked Path”

A new Artemis Whitlock story is in the newest issue of Ghosts & Scholars. In it, our sportswoman turned folklorist finds herself trapping across a particularly nasty bit of pastureland in the Pennines – and encountering something better forgotten. Getting a story in this particular publication has been on my bucket list for a few years now. Sadly, copies are only available to subscribers, but if you pop over to the MR James Appreciation Society on Facebook, you can find out how to become one and maybe snag a copy before they’re all gone.

Reminder – “Kasami and the Kitsuki Method”

Just a reminder that there’s a free Daidoji Shin short story available for your reading pleasure. In it, Shin’s long-suffering bodyguard, Kasami, must put the pieces together and figure out what Shin’s up to, before disaster strikes. Read it online here, or download a copy from DriveThruFiction.

Site Update – The Vordenburg Papers

There’s a new Baron Vordenburg story this month for subscribers – “In the Black Waters of Babylon”. In it, our favourite Styrian monster-hunter does battle with a savage mermaid in the flooded cellars of a Fenlands manor. It, and the rest of the Vordenburg tales, are free to read for subscribers (subscribing is also free).

Site Update – Miscellaneous Writing

I’ve added new entries to both Nightmare Men and Silver Screams this month, if you’d care to read them. They’re free to read, for subscribers (subscribing is also free).

MONTHLY STORY

John Bass was the first. Before Vordenburg or the Royal Occultist or any of the other characters in my repertoire, there was John Bass, the Ghostbreaker. Though, in this month’s story, “Laying the Hairy Book”, Bass deals witches rather than ghosts. Still, I like it. It had a rough inception, going through several versions before finally reaching what you see below. I haven’t written a new John Bass story since this one, though I’ve started several. Time will tell whether I get back to the ornery old cuss. Regardless – enjoy!

For Manly Wade Wellman

“It needs getting rid of, John Bass,” Franklin Armstrong said softly.

He reached out as if to stroke the square shape that sat on John Bass’ kitchen table, but pulled his hand back like a man wary of snakebite. The shape was wrapped in a threadbare pillowcase, but Bass knew what it was well enough, and the thought of it sat there on his table set his skin to crawling. His little South Carolina shack, with its rough clap-boards and tin siding, didn’t seem big or sturdy enough to contain it. 

“So get rid of it, Armstrong,” Bass said, not looking at the thing. He didn’t look directly at Armstrong either. He knew better than that, from painful experience. Instead, he looked out the kitchen window.  Outside, the setting sun rode the tops of the close-set, black-rooted trees that stood sentry over the untilled field like fire. Twilight, crawling toward dark.

“I’ve tried,” Armstrong said, his voice catching on the last word. “Lord God above, I done tried,” he continued. “I said my prayers and done my penance but it’s still here.”

“Try harder,” Bass said. Then, against his better judgement, he asked, “You’ve done tried to burn it?”

Armstrong moaned. “I burned it on a pile of dry tinder, and I burned it with gasoline. I even threw it in the charcoal pit at Leroy’s.” Bass nodded. Leroy’s was a juke joint down on Corn-Snake Road, south of Wackasaw Bend. They served barbeque on Saturdays, and the charcoal pit was so hot, the devil himself would shy away.

“Can’t imagine Leroy was too appreciative about that, for all sorts of reasons,” Bass said. He smiled without humor.  “You tried drowning it too, I expect.”

“I threw it in the river with my own two hands, and dropped it in Maisie Tucker’s well, but it just kept coming back. I can’t get shed of it.” Armstrong reached for Bass, and the other man sat back. Armstrong let his hand fall. He closed his eyes and began to shake.

“I ain’t at all surprised, if I’m being truthful,” Bass said. There was a salt shaker on the table, and he pulled it towards him. “You know damn well that burning won’t do it. Nor water either. Ain’t airy an element conjured that can do away with a book as been written by that particular hand.”

Armstrong’s eyes sprang open, and there was a wild light in them as he looked at Bass. “You got to do it, John Bass. You got to use your hoodoo – ”

“I don’t hoodoo,” Bass grated, standing abruptly, salt in his hand. “And I don’t take on another man’s burdens, Franklin Armstrong. This is your cross, so you carry it to the mount.” 

“John, please,” Armstrong’s voice cracked. “I can hear him coming down the road. The King of the North is running south, coming to carry me home. But if you was to get rid of this here book…”

“I’ll thank you to leave now,” Bass said, turning away, not wanting to hear any more. He tossed the salt over his shoulder.

Something whimpered and the chair legs scraped on the pine planks and then the door slammed as if caught by a hot storm wind. Bass turned and saw the book still sitting where Armstrong had put it. Cursing, he moved to the door, but Armstrong was nowhere in sight, and maybe he hadn’t even been there in the first place, owing mostly to the fact that he’d died two days earlier. Stranger things had been known to happen, and to a man of John Bass’ experience in particular.

But the book was there and it was real enough.

The breeze, hot and smelling of honeysuckle and burning rubber rippled through the house and the book stirred like a lion in a cage. Somehow the pillowcase had come undone, and the book looked up at him, hairy and black. The cover flopped open and the pages lazed like tongues and Bass caught words before his eyes snapped shut...in the red trees there is a red church and in the red church stands a red altar, and upon the red altar there lies a red knife; take the red knife and cut red bread…

“Hell you say,” Bass grunted. Eyes still closed, he reached out and slapped the book shut. The hair on the cover curled around his fingers. It was like a cat looking for a stroke and he got a queasy sensation deep in his gut. Bass pulled his hand back as if it had been stung.

“I know what you want,” he said. His mouth was dry and there was a pain in his head, way at the back of his skull. “Damn you, Franklin Armstrong.”

Truer words had likely never been spoken. Armstrong was damned, though he’d left the object of his damnation behind on Bass’ kitchen table. Armstrong had been a witch-man in life, a fully paid up member of a coven, and a coward. In death he was still the latter. Afraid of the thing he’d used, because it was an anchor hauling him down into the deep, dark wells of the world. Every man paid a fair price for the life he’d lived.

Bass sat back down. The book looked at him, and he looked at it. It crouched in the center of the table, the hairy cover swelling ever so slightly, as if in invitation.

“Nope, don’t think I’ll be doing that,” he said, leaning back. “I know what you are, though I reckon Franklin Armstrong knew too. But I ain’t him, and I’ll get shed of you right enough, I expect.”

A book like this one couldn’t be drowned or burned or even torn apart. It could only be given away…or buried. You had to as bury it the way you’d bury a man, six by six and say a bit.  That was why Armstrong had brought it to him. Dead, Armstrong could no more pray over anything than he had while he was still living. But Bass could, and would.

Something laughed. It was a quiet sort of sound, but he heard it and it made the summer heat drain out of the room and part of him, the dumb animal part that had been to war, wanted to go for one of the kitchen knives in the rack by the sink. They had been his wife’s knives. She was dead now, ten years gone, and he hadn’t touched the knives in their rack where she’d left them since that day. He wouldn’t touch them now. Not for a small thing like this. Not even if the Devil hisownself was sitting in the kitchen.

The pages of the book fluttered and brought the smell of strange things into his nose and images of lean, long-legged shapes galloping through distant, dead places into his mind. Whether it was a warning, or an enticement, he couldn’t say. The book was old and like all old things, it had a temper. Bass had one himself, and it was stretched thin.

Bass picked up the salt shaker. Outside, the birds fell silent. The twilight sky was the color of rust stains on cloth, and the last vestiges of the day were slipping on by, leaving only darkness in their wake. It’d be full dark soon, and no stars to light a wise man’s way. Bass wondered whether Franklin Armstrong had made it back to his grave. He pushed the thought aside and poured a circle of salt around the book.

The screen door banged like a judge’s gavel, and the windows rattled in their peeling frames as the first white dots danced across the table. The curtains his wife had made from the lace of her wedding dress danced and twisted, and he could smell something sickly sweet and strong on the air. He wondered at a distant noise, like his old mule pawing at the hard soil of the fields outside. The animal in question set to braying and wailing a few moments later, its voice echoing out of the barn out back, as the sun slipped out of sight. There was something out there, waiting for the light to go.

Then, there was always something or other out in the dark. That was why he’d taken up the iron nails and salts, and charged a fair price for his services. A man had to keep meat on the table and fire in the stove for his loved ones, that was all there was to it. Bass had put the dead back into their graves and set pennies on the eyes of things that had taken the low, winding road. He’d never charged folks more than they could afford, and most as paid gladly.

There was a saying around local parts as allowed that a man who’d spent blood barring the devil’s way once might bar it forever more. Though Bass held no truck with such sentiments, he knew that was why Armstrong had come to him, bearing his sins. But dead men were notoriously bad at paying their debts. “Your sins are yours, and no responsibility of mine, Armstrong,” he said, out loud.

“And such heavy sins they is, for such a little man.”

The voice slid on up from the porch like a shadow. Bass grunted, and turned to the screen door. He’d been half-expecting someone to come knocking before too long. “Well, I expect as you’d know, Maisie. Seeing as you one of them folks as led him onto the crooked path.”

Maisie Tucker was beautiful, in that Old Testament way. A woman of substance and promise in equal measure, with eyes like hot brass and hair the color of spilled ink. She’d led many a man widdershins, and more besides. She looked like Eve, but she was a serpent at heart. He knew that from previous dealings. Supposedly, she’d hexed Selma Pickney’s chickens, so that they forgot how to lay. And Abel Carter swore that he’d heard tell that she’d drawn a razor across a black rooster’s throat on Christmas Eve, and laid out a wet feast for something that spoke in a voice like a bell tolling up out of deep places.

Whatever the truth to those stories, Bass could feel the strength in her, beating at his senses like heat from an open stove. It was a fell sort of strength, hard and wild. The sort of strength you needed to draw the dead up out of their sleep, or wrestle with things that ought not to be. But it was a given strength, rather than earned. The way the book on his table had to be given, or a man’s soul.

Maisie leaned against the door frame, not quite touching it, bathed in shadows and moonlight. She laughed – a soft, genteel sound, at odds with everything about her. “Now John, is that any way to speak to a lady?”

Bass shrugged. “I’ll let you know, next I speak to one.”

Maisie grinned. “Still the same sour, old apple, I see.” She licked her lips. “It’s awful chilly out here, John. You going to invite me in?”

“I don’t think I will, Maisie. But you can come on in, if you can open that door yourself.” She smiled, and made to touch the door, but then her eyes caught sight of something, high up on the outside frame – a horse shoe, right where he’d nailed it, the day he and his wife had moved in. He watched Maisie’s face turn ugly for a moment, and then smooth itself back out, quick like. “That’s what I thought,” he said.

“That old horse shoe above your door is loose, John. I’m afraid it’ll hit me.”

“It ain’t either loose. There’s one on the back door too, so you’d best watch yourself.”

She craned her neck, trying to see inside. “That’s some interesting reading material there, John. How’d you come by that, I wonder?”

“I expect you know damn well how I came by it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.” He wondered if Maisie was the reason Armstrong had been so desperate. What he knew of a coven’s doings wouldn’t fill a sack, but he knew that what one claimed, all owned.

“Shouldn’t ought to swear in front of a lady, John. Didn’t that wife of yours ever teach you no manners?” She laughed again. “Then, maybe she didn’t have time, dying as she did.”

Bass hunched forward in his seat, causing the legs to squeak against the floor. “You talking awful loud and brave for a woman alone, Maisie Tucker. Who else is creeping round out there, I wonder? They’ll find all my doors and windows sealed tight, against your sort.”

She frowned then, like a child that’s been found out in a lie. “Why, John? You scared?”

“Only a fool ain’t scared of the dark,” Bass retorted. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of a head ducking beneath the sill of the window over the sink. A man’s head, with thinning hair. How many of them were out there, then? Two or three at least, if the fumbling at the back door was anything to go by. The house wasn’t big, and he could hear everything, if he listened close. Right now, it sounded like someone was softly banging on the walls, and gently dancing on the roof. There was even a quiet scuffling below, as of mice, or perhaps something larger.

A verse from the Book of Joel fluttered through his head. They rush upon the city; they run along the wall. They climb into houses; like thieves they enter through the windows. Only his windows were sealed tight with iron nails, and the frames rubbed with capsicum and salt. He’d taken precautions, as a man in his trade ought. “You come away from there now, you hear?” he called out. “It’s barred tight.”

The rattling at the back door grew more insistent. On the table, the book’s pages flapped, making a sound like a dog smacking its lips. A man could lose time in those pages. There were three colors of pages—red with black writing, white with red and black with writing you could only read beneath the moon or at certain times of the year.

It would take more time than a man ought to have to read them all, and learn all that was in them. Time and more than time; the hairy books were promises bound in skin, and they as wanted to give the man what read them every single one. But that was how it happened, how it had always happened. Promises had a power.

Bass had made no promise to Armstrong, but he was bound regardless. There was a right way and a wrong way, and he held to the former as best he could.

“Night comes on, John,” Maisie said. “Sure you won’t let me in?”

“Not tonight, or any other, Maisie.” He eyed her. “Best you go now.”

She turned away, a slow smile spreading across her face. He followed her gaze, and saw a red light to the north, just visible through the kitchen windows. It was like the eye of distant train, only there weren’t no tracks near here. He recalled a bit he’d read somewhere about how Hell was in the north. He recalled too how the king of that place was said to have written all the red pages of all the hairy books, and how he sent those pages out, like hounds hunting wickedness. And hadn’t Armstrong mentioned a King in the North, running south?  “Is that who you waiting for then, Maisie Tucker?” he said, looking at the woman on his porch. “The King whom your sort bow down to?”

Maisie eyed him through the door, her hands not quite pressed to it. “Let me in, John. Let me take that there book from you. Armstrong should never have brought it here, and burdened you with it. That wasn’t kind of him.”

“Maybe not kind, but maybe right.” Bass knocked a knuckle on the table. “Seems to me, he knew as you’d come looking. So, he brought it where it’d be safe. If he’d been a better man, or alive, he might’ve taken it to church. But he was what he was, so he brought it to me.”

Maisie shook her head, as if in pity. “And what do you think you going to do, John?” Her eyes flashed suddenly, the first bit of real emotion he’d seen from her. “That book is ours. Armstrong took what wasn’t his to take, and he’ll pay for it, along and along.”

“I expect so. But that’s between him and God Almighty.”

“And tonight is between you and us.” She stepped back, her face lit by that red light. “The King is coming to reclaim what’s his, and he’ll be here at the dark just before dawn. That’s all the time you got left in this here world, John.”

“Then I expect I’d best get to work.”

Bass stood abruptly, and there was a soft sound, like the beating of a bat’s wings. Maisie was gone from the door. She wouldn’t be far, though. He cocked his head, listening. The sounds outside had faded away to stillness.

He murmured the Lord’s Prayer as he found his old shovel, walked out of the house and around back. In the barn, the mule was making noise, its hooves beating a tattoo on the wood of its stall. But there was another sound, audible now that he was outside, and he looked north again, his eyes squeezed into slits, listening. It sounded like hooves, not horse hooves or mule hooves, but cloven and sharp and he could feel the sparks they struck from the stones of the dirt road. The sky was deep red where it should have been dark, and the trees that lined the horizon looked like the bristly, black hairs on the book’s spine.

Another verse, this one from the Book of Daniel, rose up in his memory and he muttered, “The King of the North who comes against him shall do whatever he wants, and no one can oppose him.” He shook his head and frowned. “Well, we’ll see about that.”

Grass crunched. He spun. Old instincts, honed in the mud and blood of Europe, brought the shovel up and around, and he struck. Something screamed – a caterwauling, cattywampus scream that sent shivers down his spine. A black shape retreated in a scattering of shadow. But it hadn’t been alone. More shapes, beast-lean and low-slung, crept around him. Eyes flickered green in the dark, reflecting the light from the house. They growled. There were words, jangled up amidst the growling. He backed away, shovel held like a spear.

“Give us the book, John,” Maisie called out, from somewhere out of sight. “Just go in and fetch it out, and we’ll say no more about it.”

Bass didn’t reply. The shovel dipped, and he carved a cruciform shape in the dirt. Two quick slashes. There was a quick noise, like startled birds, and the black shapes were gone. Bass waited, counting each breath. When he’d counted seven, he bent. One place was as good as another, for what he had in mind. But he had to be quick. He was safe in the house, but not out here. They’d be back, and in no mood for patience.

Bass dug into the hard soil. The skin between his shoulders itched from the weight of green eyes. The sound from the north was louder. He bent forward, digging and praying, until both his hands and voice were raw.

They said that when a man as had given himself up to them hairy books with their red and white and black pages, that when he died the devil would come to collect, not his soul, for he already had that, but the hairy book. Armstrong had extracted no promise, but he’d left his burden on Bass’ doorstep regardless. A dead man’s hope.

The sound was steady and gnawing, like the echoes of distant gun shots, clopCLOPclopCLOP, coming faster and faster, running under the red tatters of the night sky, and Bass kept his head down and his eyes on the hole he’d dug and off the horizon. Whatever was coming wouldn’t get here for some time yet. Hell was far, and the road was long.

After a time, the hole was as square as he could make it, and deep enough. The moon was high and showing like white bone amid the raw red of the night sky, as the trees rattled like bayonets along the trench-line. He turned back towards the house, ignoring the thunder that he knew wasn’t thunder, because the sky was clear and there was no storm.

They were there, as he walked back, creeping on the eaves and peering at him, around the edge of the porch. They were whispering among themselves in soft voices. His grip on the shovel tightened. The whispers stopped.

Maisie stood between him and the porch. She hadn’t been there, and then she was. “That was Clyde Spence you hit, if you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t.”

She smiled, sweet and easy. “You learn how to fight with shovels in France, John? Ol’ Black Jack teach you that?”

“Never met Major General Pershing, to my recollection.” He took a two-handed grip on the shovel. “Step aside, now.”

“Say please.”

Bass raised the shovel and took a step forward. The only part of Maisie that moved was her smile. It got wide and long and white, like a slash of moonlight. “Let me in that there house, John. Let me have that book, and you’ll nary hear a whisper of me again.”

“And what about them? I bet Clyde wants him a piece of me, at least.”

Out in the dark, something growled low and long. Maisie waved a hand, and it fell silent. “That book belongs to us, John. Armstrong was one of us, bought and paid for. But the iron in his soul got rusty, towards the end. He thought he could pay debt with debt.” She cocked her head. “He was wrong, as it happens. But you don’t have to share his fate.”

Bass grunted. “Don’t expect as I will.”

“The King is coming, and you don’t want to meet him. Be sensible. Give us the book.”

Bass peered at her. “Why you in such a hurry, Maisie Tucker?” When she didn’t answer, he went on. “I think it’s you as don’t want to meet the one you bow to. Leastways not without that book you bargained away your soul for.”

She stared at him, her face cold and stiff. Her eyes glittered green, and he suddenly recalled a story he’d heard in the trenches, about a certain town where all the folk became cats by night, to dance and prowl as they would. He levelled the shovel at her. “I showed you the cross once, and you had the good grace to skedaddle. I can do it again.”

“I’ll have the meat off your bones before you make the first swipe,” she said. Her voice wasn’t soft anymore. She hunched forward, and something like sweat gleamed dark on her skin. Bass took a breath, and then a step. The shovel handle slid through his hands as he swung it. She eeled away, hissing and spitting. Then he was past her, and thumping up the porch steps.

Hot breath washed over the back of his neck, and several sharp somethings tore at his back, ripping his shirt wide open and laying into the flesh beneath. He flung himself forward and hit the door, rattling it. Blind, he twisted, shovel lashing out like a club.

A panther-shape jerked back, letting out a wild squall. He fumbled at the door and fell inside. The thing hit the door as it banged shut, and let out another scream. Bass rolled over and stared out. The creature slunk off the porch, tail lashing, looking back at him balefully as it went. He let loose a shaky breath.

A moment later, the fumbling at the windows and roof started up again. They weren’t planning on giving up. He groped for the edge of the table, and hauled himself up. He hissed, as pain flared through his back. He fumbled at the wound. It wasn’t deep, but it hurt like blazes. He found a bottle of whisky on the sideboard and splashed some into a rag. He groaned as he pressed the rag against his back, and took a slug from the bottle. It burned outside and in, but in a good way. He needed that fire.

Bass dropped into a chair, muscles trembling from exhaustion. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, and he’d worn himself out digging and running. He needed a minute to catch his breath. He stared out the door, watching as green eyes flickered in the shadows outside. Sinuous shapes danced in the red light, and soft voices chanted. He felt a tugging on his soul as the song crept through the eaves.

Memories fluttered across the surface of his mind, like moths circling a flame. His wife’s face was among them. She had been that kind of woman, his Talia. You couldn’t not think about her, even when it was better you didn’t. His eyes got heavy, and his chin dipped towards his chest. The bottle of whisky fell from his grip.

“You look hungry.”

He looked up. His wife set a chipped ceramic plate loaded with a steaming stew of carrots, canned beef and peas over rice down on the table in front of him. “Eat,” she said. Her voice was soft, the accent an ocean distant from his tiny shack. She’d been a war bride, the only thing other than bad memories he’d brought home from Europe after the Great Big One. He made no move to reach for the plate.

“You’re dead.” The words slipped out before he could stop them. She nodded, in that way he remembered. His heart twisted in his chest.

“I am.”

“You’re not here.”

“I’m not,” she said, agreeably. “You spilled your whisky.”

He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the shadows in the kitchen were thick, and the single light bulb overhead flickered dully. He realized that he’d fallen asleep. The book sat and watched him come like a cat waiting to pounce. A trickle of spilled whisky stretched from the fallen bottle towards the circle of salt.  He reached out instinctively to mop it up, but found he couldn’t move.

 It was hard to breathe. There was a weight on his chest, and something wrapped around his throat. He made to shove himself upright, and something fought against him. The weight twisted around, and the grip on his throat tightened. Something hissed in his ear.

“Found me a crack, John. Just a little one. High up in the stove pipe.”

Maisie.

Bass staggered into the table. His limbs were heavy, and his lungs strained. His head swam. He clawed at the air, his fingers finding something that felt like raw meat. The bottle crashed to the floor, and the book slid. From outside, voices rose in a murmur as he wrestled with his unseen opponent. He groped for the salt.

“Just another squeeze more, John, and then you’ll be with that wife of yours,” Maisie crooned. “I’ll dump your body in that hole you so kindly dug, and take my book, free and clear.”

The world went black and soft at the edges. Maisie’s voice seemed to come from far away, and her grip on his throat was like iron. For a moment, he thought he heard his wife’s voice, whispering to him. Then his fingers found the salt, and he dashed the shaker over the shape that held him. Maisie gave a cry, like a woman who’s been slapped. He ripped her from him, and sucked in a lungful of air. Maisie slipped from his hands with another high-pitched cry, this one long and drawn out and sorrowful. The door banged as she fled.

He collapsed against the table, wheezing. He glared at the book. It was as dangerous in its own way as Maisie. Outside, the singing had stopped. “Almost had me,” he said. The book didn’t reply. Neither did Maisie. He doubted she’d be back.

Bass shook his head, trying to clear it. They’d hexed him, put him to sleep. The sky was growing light, under the shroud of red. The dark moment before the dawn was approaching, and the King with it. He’d lost too much time sleeping, and wrestling with Maisie.

He took a bag of nails out of a drawer and spilled them on the table, keeping his eyes on the book. He could feel a tremble beneath his feet, the vibrations of a mammoth tread walking the low, winding road up from the fire down below. The King was close now, and coming fast.

“Now we come to it,” he said and grabbed the book. Something squealed and then he was pushing one of the nails through the swollen flesh of the cover. The book began to scream. It writhed in his hands and it was like holding a catfish or a snake and he stumbled back, another nail in his hand, iron to pin its hateful pages shut. Something that wasn’t blood or ink or anything as pure as either spilled across his fingers and things that might have been teeth bit at his fingers. From outside, voices set up a wailing. Hands slapped against the kitchen window and feet stomped on the roof, trying to distract him.

Bass ignored them. He slammed the book down hard on the table. The door was banging hard enough to crack the frame and the curtains tore off of their rods, lashing him across the face. Behind the wallpaper and up under the eaves things that were black and hairy like clutching hands or crawling spiders moved and scrabbled, showering him with splinters or causing the pictures to tumble off the walls.

“Don’t care for that, do you?” he said, fighting to keep his voice calm. Nine nails he pressed into the book as it shrieked and bulged in his grip and then, as the ninth sank in, it hung exhausted in his bloody hands. Nine nails of iron, to bind its hateful pages shut. Iron and salt were the only sure remedies he’d learned of, for matters like these.

When he’d finished, he leaned over the table, breathing hard. His back ached. He was tired. The ache climbed and twisted into a knot at the base of his skull, but he ignored it. There was still work to be done. He snatched up the shovel from where he’d dropped it. Shovel in one hand and book in the other, he stepped out onto the porch.

There was no wind, but the air churned nonetheless and the red glow was spread across the horizon, lighting up the night like distant fires. A shape bounced and bounded down the lane towards his plot of land, too far away for him to make out, but it wasn’t any sort of man. It might have been a black sheet caught on the air or just a shadow dancing in the moonlight, but Bass knew that neither of those would explain the sound of hooves or why his mule was screaming in its stall in the barn, as if in warning.

He ran towards the grave he’d dug. Things he couldn’t see sought to trip him, grabbing at his legs and clawing at his ankles. Maisie might be gone, but the others were still around, and still determined. He could hear them following him, their breath rasping hot and savage across the nape of his neck.  He leaped over the grave and raised the book, shouting, “You want your hairy book? Come and get it!”

And then he let it tumble into the grave. It hit the dirt with a sound like a stone striking the water’s surface and he raised the shovel. They were all around him, now, and the sky was sliding from black to purple. He could make out their hunched shapes, crawling low across the ground. Clawed hands reached for him, and green eyes blazed like marsh lights. He swung the shovel, driving them back.

Before they could regroup, Bass scooped up a shovelful of dirt and dumped it, before repeating the process. The shapes gave out a sigh as two shovelfuls turned into four and four into eight as he filled in the grave. He recited the Lord’s Prayer as he worked, the words tumbling from his lips the way the dirt fell from his shovel. And all the while, that terrible red light grew brighter, until even the green-eyed shadows gave way before it.

Something with a shadow as deep as dark as the pit was striding towards him as the grave was filled in, and sometimes it looked like a flock of crows and other times like a man made out of black corn husks and then like a tattered shroud. Its hooves were striking sparks so fast was it coming towards him. Panic sliced through him like the blade of one of his wife’s knives. It was the King of the North, come south to claim what was owed, even as the Bible had it. Its long arms stretched, reaching, and Bass threw down the last shovelful of dirt and shouted the last words and slashed two lines in the dirt. A thunderclap sounded as something wet like a spray of sea-water passed over him and was gone.

And then there was nothing to see but the dawn’s light, and his house, and the newly-filled grave at his feet. After a time, Bass picked up his shovel and carefully patted down the dirt and thickened the two lines of the cross. He’d find rocks and cover it up later. But for now the book was buried and dead, and that was good enough for him.

There was no sign of Maisie Tucker or the others. They’d fled before the coming of their lord and master. Like as not, they were still running. Bass considered hitching up the mule and riding out to Maisie’s place, to see what he could see. But he decided against it, after a few moments. If Maisie wanted to find him, she knew where he lived. And if she didn’t, well…good riddance.

He wondered idly whether laying the book would make any difference to Armstrong’s fate, in the end. Or whether the King of the North would, thwarted, move on to the witch-man’s lonely grave to collect on his debt regardless. He hoped not, for Armstrong’s sake.

He’d always charged the living a fair price for laying haints and setting things down in their graves. It galled him to think he’d never be able to charge Armstrong’s accounts for what he was owed for this particular service.

“And if ever you owed a man, Franklin Armstrong, it’d be me,” Bass muttered, dusting dirt from his hands. Then, shovel over his shoulder, he left the grave and what it contained and didn’t look back.

And that’s it for this month. If you made it this far, thanks for giving it a read and possibly even subscribing. I hope you enjoyed this back-to-basics newsletter. Check back next time for more new releases (hopefully) and a new (old) monthly story.

But for now, to paraphrase the estimable Carnacki – out you go!

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In the Black Waters of Babylon

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