Feast of Shadows, #1

by Rick Wayne

  “Anyway, years go by. I made detective. I never thought about that day again. So many worse things had happened, I had no reason. Until I ran into him. The driver. At the courthouse. In the hall. As I’m walking out of a routine probation hearing, there he is. He was a little older. And thinner, actually. But it was him. No question. Turns out he’d had a hard stretch at Attica. Prison is hard on pedos. It’s probably the only time the sheer brutality of the place finds a positive outlet.

  “And here he was getting out. Served a year. He claimed he never touched the girl—a different one. Not the one in the Chevelle. He claimed it was all the friend. And the DA couldn’t prove otherwise. Not from the physical evidence. Not from the girl’s statement. Not from her parents or anyone else. The friend got fifteen long. This dude got three years for felony child endangerment and was out after fourteen months.”

  I paused.

  “And in those fourteen months, he was raped. Repeatedly.”

  Her lips pursed.

  “Fuck . . .” I ran my hands through my hair. “I don’t know if he deserved that. I don’t know if anyone deserves that. All I know is, I shouldn’t have been so worried that day.” I looked at her. “I shouldn’t have been afraid.”

  I sat up. Our fingers touched gently. The tip of mine traced the tip of hers.

  “Is that what’s bothering you?” she asked. “Regret?”

  I shrugged.

  “Tell me.”

  “I dunno. I’ve been following this trail. Couple trails actually. Three different lines. Missing girl. Whole pile of dead bodies. They all converge on exactly the same place. Exactly. But this guy . . .” I shook my head.

  “What’s the problem?”

  I took a long deep breath and let it out. “The problem is that the whole world is telling me not to go there. Everyone. Fred. Hammond. My boss. The department. Even this crazy old bitty I know. They’re all saying exactly the same thing, loud and clear: Drop it. Let it go. Move on.”

  She waited. “What happens if you don’t?”

  “I could get hurt. Or worse, the people around me could.” I looked at her reaction.

  She didn’t have one. “And what happens if you walk away?”

  I thought for a moment. “Same as usual. The guys in the Chevelle drive off again. And I let them.”

  Kinney put her fingers between mine. “Sounds like you don’t have much choice, then.”

  I cut the city padlock and looped the chain around a hook on the heavy gate. I hung the broken lock through one of the links. There were no lights down there, especially at that hour, so everything had to be illuminated by the beam from the LED lamp at the crown of my forehead. I adjusted it upward before attempting the jump up the four-foot-high concrete slab, which was dry at the top but a little slippery at the sides. Down a short arched passage was a bolt-studded iron door with no handle. I eventually got it open, but it took some tugging. I had to drag it hard across the concrete in short bursts, each of which triggered a loud grinding noise that could’ve theoretically woken the entire block, even from the sewer. But I didn’t have a choice. I needed close to a foot before I could slip inside.

  Beyond was a vertical shaft that enclosed a mechanical lift, the kind that used to be common in the days before electric motors. A pair of long chain loops dangled. Pulling them turned a crank connected to gears that lifted the metal grate vertically along the pitted track to the top—albeit very slowly, and only with the assistance of counterweights that descended along a neighboring brace.

  I looked up, but not before moving the beam of my headlamp to the side, just in case there was anyone at the top. The bolted, crisscrossing metal braces that secured the vertical track were all covered with a thin layer of dark brown rust, but they otherwise seemed as sturdy as the day they were installed. They didn’t budge when I shook them two-handed. Rather than risk the noise of the rattling chains, I turned off my head lamp and used the gear holes of the track like a ladder. I slipped my gloved hands inside and pulled myself up one step at a time. I’d like to say that, as I ascended that shaft, I was as confident as I’d been walking into that fifth-floor apartment several weeks before with only my wits and a necklace to save me. But that would’ve been a lie. Down in that dark hole, my heart was pounding so loudly in my ears that I had to stop several times to make sure I wasn’t making noise I couldn’t hear over the sound of my own pulse. I had absolutely no idea what I would encounter at the top, nor even the category of fates that awaited me if I failed in my mission.

  The room into which I stepped was completely dark but had the open stillness that suggested great size. I risked using the headlamp again but kept the beam pointed toward the ground on the lowest setting.

  “Whoa . . .”

  There was a full tree in there. Alive. The back wall was covered in shelving. At its base was a row of arched brick nooks that looked like they had been erected around the same time as the mechanical lift. Each was sealed with a gate, but not, it seemed, to keep people from stealing the objects inside. It seemed more like it was a prison—keeping the objects in. The arch at the very center was covered by a folding screen, as if whatever was in there was especially important, and I stepped toward it slowly, moving around the tree in a wide arc. I felt the talisman around my neck, just to make sure I hadn’t accidentally dropped it on the climb.

  The screen had a peaceful scene, some kind of Asian design. A little bird sat on a branch sprouting tiny pink blossoms. I moved it out of the way with the barrel of my gun. I raised my lamp.

  The beam illuminated a skull. But it wasn’t a skeleton. It was a chair. A bone chair. It was locked behind the gate and chained crosswise. Tarnished copper hands held it to the floor as if the chains were lassos and the chair a bucking bronco. I stared into the hollow sockets of the single skull in the back, nestled between the undulating rows of vertebrae. Human vertebrae. The empty sockets stared right back. The eeriness of it captivated me for a moment. I felt like I was being hypnotized. But I didn’t realize my muscles were slowly relaxing until I had stooped enough to cause the heavy weight of my backpack to shift. I snapped to attention, stood straight, and removed the baby sledgehammer from the side strap. The tall windows were covered in all manner of arcane symbols. I stepped to the closest and raised my hand.

  A voice resounded through the darkness like the hum of a didgeridoo.

  “Have you come to kill me?”

  The complete story will conclude in Part 2.

  FEAST OF SHADOWS is interactive

  Read a deleted outtake: The Rediscovery of the Necronomicon

  [Just click here]

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  Excerpt from

  THE MINUS FACTION

  The black lights in the dome bled the color from the room. The once-vibrant Soviet mural that filled the round wall was reduced to ashes and grays while the tiny puddle of blood that gathered on the floor turned black as tar. The dark pool widened slowly under the violet glow, fed from a single trickle that snaked down the leg of an iron chair and fell from a stray screw head. Black pearls dribbled to the ground in time with the music warbling from the horn of an old Victrola record player. A Russian baritone crooned a 1930s love song, barely audible over the crisscrossing scratches in the vinyl.

  Как много девушек хороших,

  Как много ласковых имён,

  Но лишь одна из них тревожит,

  Унося покой и сон,

  Когда влюблён.

  By the second verse, even the cheery orchestra was obscured by the muffled screams of the man in the iron chair.

  Любовь нечаянно нагрянет,

  Когда её совсем не ждёш
ь,

  И каждый вечер сразу станет

  Удивительно хорош.

  И ты поёшь.

  The chair’s high back was made of cross-welded bars, like a narrow cage. Metal arms on hinges swung across the front and latched on the opposite side, holding the single occupant perfectly motionless as he bit a cracked and gouged rubber pad and struggled to free himself. Iron sleeves, worn smooth from centuries of use, kept the man’s limbs fixed while a fat needle punctured his vein near the elbow and bled him in spurts into a glass jar. A bead of runoff gathered at the wound. It grew like a ruby tumor until it was large enough to break free and tumble down the man’s skin.

  And still the happy Russian crooned for his young love.

  Сердце, тебе не хочется покоя,

  Сердце, как хорошо на свете жить.

  Сердце, как хорошо, что ты такое!

  Спасибо, сердце, что ты умеешь

  так любить!

  The song finished as the drops slowed and stopped. A single patch of static repeated over and over as the silent record spun. The metal restraints on the iron chair were loosened and the limp body slumped to the floor.

  A pale, red-lipped woman in a form-fitting leather top unscrewed the blood-filled jar from the chair and sniffed it like fine wine. Her nails were manicured. Her bald head was crowned in a twirling, gold-wire headdress. A multitude of pearls swung from small hooks and dangled about as she moved her head in the dim light.

  She scowled at the glass. “Needs to breathe.”

  She walked past a six-foot candelabra dripping wax to a low cabinet covered in a dozen jars identical to the one in her hand. Four at the front were full. She felt each for warmth before swapping the third for the one in her hand. She swirled it like a rare vintage and watched the viscous fluid run down the side. She took a sip and walked back to the dying man. She moved his face to one side with her bare foot to get a better look at his eyes. The tips of her toes were stained with red dye. The seam at the front of her dark gown was stitched by a line of white animal teeth. An ivory-hilted dagger inside a white leather sheath hung from the sash around her hips.

  “Another!” she called before taking another sip.

  Metal doors, the only exit, opened with a clang. White stencils on the exterior spelled “Recreation Room” in Russian. A face-painted soldier in pilfered Soviet fatigues stood in the door and bowed silently to his lady. Then he walked to the dead man.

  The ancient iron chair was bolted to the floor off-center in the round room. Candles flickered while the black lights hummed overhead and turned the red Soviet star, which filled the inside of the heavy concrete dome, into a black sun. A pair of large carrion birds, bald Asiatic condors, squawked and flapped from a T-shaped perch while water gently lapped in a lounging pool below them. As with the puddle, the violet lights turned the steaming water black. It swirled as if something large swam through it.

  The carrion birds watched a smear spread across the smooth concrete floor as the drained man was dragged away. The sound of the sliding body triggered whimpering from the array of green copper cabinets on the far side of the room.

  An impressive guard, well over six and a half feet with a face covered in a tanned-skin cowl, appeared in the door. At his feet was a pair of foreigners.

  The pale woman raised a thin eyebrow. “Dessert? Already?” She spoke in a formal dialect of her native tongue, a rare Turkic language unknown outside of the deep holes in which her people dwelt.

  “Intruders, Lady. They were caught inside the perimeter fence trying to break into our encrypted lines.”

  Lady Zoya studied the prisoners as she took another sip of blood from her glass. She squinted in disgust as she swallowed. She was so sick of Chinese.

  The newcomers were horribly out of place. Especially their clothes. They looked like tourists rather than mercenaries. There was an old man—European, based on his smell. His eyes were frosted and sightless, his cheeks were speckled in stubby gray, his liver-spotted scalp was bald except for several long, matted wisps that sprouted irregularly from his oblong skull. His casual clothes were simple and just as gray as the rest of him.

  The pale lady took a step forward and licked the red from her upper lip. The pearls in her headdress shook and glimmered in the candlelight. The old man’s companion was female. Her head hung low. Her long, wild hair had fallen partially free of her black bandanna. It was matted, but intentionally so, almost like dreadlocks, and it obscured her face. She was also dressed casually—far too casually for the chilly steppe outside—with tight, cut-off jeans and a loose-fitting skull-print top. She looked like she’d just come back from some American mall. She was young, and the deliciously smooth skin of her arms, chest, and right leg were covered in tattoos—repeating bonelike patterns of black and deep blue that looked like they had been frozen in ice and then fractured.

  Lady Zoya swirled her glass and took another drink. What to make of such a pair? “Put the woman in the chair.”

  The old man would break, she figured, as soon as the girl started to scream. Lady Zoya turned to the dark water. “Grimmúr, darling. Dinner is here.”

  A man’s head poked just above the surface. He squinted like an invading soldier surveying a beach. He stood straight and walked out of the pool. He was bald like his wife, and at least as pale, but with a prominent jaw, dark eyes, and bulging muscles.

  The young woman’s head stayed limp as the guard fixed her to the cagelike iron chair. The squeaks of the metal restraints echoed off the concrete walls as the cowled guard locked them in place—all except the rubber-coated bite-bar.

  The bald man stepped completely out of the dark pool. Water ran off his bulky arms and chest and splattered on the floor. Ritual scarring marred his chest and shoulders. Under the black lights overhead, the blood in his superficial veins and arteries fluoresced a deep violet. The light coursed through his skin like the glowing branches of a river, pulsating slightly in time with his heart. As he reached for the heavy military coat hanging from an unlit candelabra, his eyes shone green like a hunting cat’s.

  He draped the dark jacket over his shoulders, leaving the rest of his body exposed. The hood and sleeves were lined with bushy fur. A red Soviet star, identical to the one on the ceiling, was sewn to the fabric just below the shoulders. The coat was too small for him, however, and barely reached the top of his knees. The left sleeve was torn in half at the elbow. Cotton batting, speckled in red, jutted from the fabric as if it had been bitten off with the previous owner still inside.

  The lady swapped the records on the old Victrola by the birds’ roost, and they flapped their wings at her.

  “Oh, hush,” she chided. “You can have the old one as soon as we’re done.” Then she turned to her husband. “Am I correct, darling, that you will want the woman?”

  Iskhan Grimmúr took a drink from the cup his wife offered him, then licked the red from his upper lip. “Who’s the oddly-shaped one?” He motioned with a single large finger to the old man.

  The impressive guard forced the intruder to his knees under the scratched and faded mural. Smiling, serene Soviet soldiers marched proudly in unison, having cast off the tyrannies of the czar depicted on the opposite side of the room.

  “They were found together,” the guard explained. “Unarmed. But the woman had these in her hair.” He held out a pair of long metal pins, like knitting needles.

  Grimmúr walked over and took the pins. Both were identical—three-inch silvered tips filed sharp and bent sideways at a slight angle, ends capped in tiny beetles made of blue enamel. He smiled. “Embalmer’s probes?” He examined one of the beetles closely. “Egyptian. Very expensive.” He switched to Russian and turned to his captive. “Where did you get these?”

  The woman in the iron chair kept her head down. Without the pins to keep everything organized, the heavy tangles of her hair dang
led loosely.

  “I’m not sure she can speak, lord.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because of the mask.”

  “Mask?” Grimmúr scowled. He walked to the woman, grabbed a fistful of thick hair, and yanked the woman’s head up.

  An angled metal mask covered her mouth and nose and wrapped around the sides of her head. It was dark. Three slatted vents opened on each side.

  “You imbecile!” Lady Zoya scolded. Her voice resounded off the round concrete walls. “That should have come off the moment she was taken.”

  “We tried, m’lady.” The cowled guard bowed his head. “It appears to be attached.”

  “Attached?” Grimmúr scowled. “What do you mean attached? Attached to what?”

  “To her insides, lord.”

  Grimmúr put the pins in his jacket pocket. He held the woman’s hair with one large hand, wrapped his other around the mask, and tugged. The guard was right. It wasn’t merely fastened around her skull. It extended into her mouth, down her throat, and deep into her chest. It didn’t budge.

  The man held the mask with one hand and turned the woman’s head from side to side to examine it. She didn’t resist. He looked in her eyes. They were white-blue, like ice, and shone bright under the black light, like an angel’s. She stared up at her captor without fear. Indeed, she revealed no emotion at all.

  Grimmúr thumbed one of the vents. A ridge of polished metal ran along the top. A micro-wire mesh covered the thin opening. “Any idea what it’s for?”

  “No, sir.”

  The Iskhan leaned over and looked at her skin. She was white, maybe European. Or American. He switched to a heavily accented English. “What language do you speak, woman?”