Grim Death and Bill the Electrocuted Criminal

by Mike Mignola

  Believing that he knew what her intent was, Bentley allowed the ectoplasmic representation of her sorrow to move toward his eyes, coating the bulging orbs inside his skull with her sadness.

  And then he saw why she had not gone to her rest.

  What was still left for him to do.

  “The man,” he said nearly breathless. “Bill … your lover…”

  Tianna continued to cry, her tears filling the room like smoke.

  “Even though I saw … that he took your life…”

  The ghost of Tianna Hoops covered her face, and cried and cried.

  “Somehow you believe he’s innocent.”

  The spectral aerialist lowered her hands from her face, and her look was desperate—beckoning.

  Catch my killer, her stare said.

  And despite the fact that the man whose hands had squeezed the life from her throat already sat upstate in a maximum security prison, awaiting punishment for the crime of killing Tianna, Bentley had no choice but to investigate, to satisfy the desires of the departed aerialist.

  As well as the demands of Death itself.

  Chapter Six

  BEFORE:

  Because I could not stop for Death—

  He kindly stopped for me—

  The Carriage held but just Ourselves—

  And Immortality.

  Bentley looked up from the Emily Dickinson book he had received on his eleventh birthday, and smiled.

  He imagined the carriage that would come for him, a black ’32 Packard driven by a skull-faced chauffeur who held the door to the backseat open for him, bowing as Bentley approached.

  He wondered where the black car would go … where Death would take him.

  “Bentley!” called the familiar voice of Pym. “Bentley, where are you?”

  The boy made himself smaller in a secret section of the attic that he considered his special hiding place. It was time for his medicine, and he had no desire to ingest that foul-tasting liquid this day, thank you very much.

  He remained very quiet, moving the book ever so slightly to capture the light shining into the crowded, darkened space of the attic, so that he could continue to read Miss Dickinson’s captivating words.

  We slowly drove—He knew no haste

  And I had put away

  My labor and my leisure too,

  For His Civility—

  Pym continued to call for him. The butler was close by, checking some of the empty rooms where Bentley used to hide when he was much younger, and not as smart as he was now. The attic was practically forgotten these days, which was perfect for Bentley, and his desire to escape the trials of his health.

  The butler’s calls receded into the distance, and Bentley relaxed. He imagined that he had at least another half hour or so before his parents joined the search for him, but then again …

  His parents had become quite entranced with their new houseguest, Professor Romulus. A shiver that Bentley couldn’t quite understand coursed up and down his spine with the recollection of the strange machinery he had seen being built in the mansion’s solarium, and the look upon his mother’s face when he’d asked what it was for.

  His father had then called for Pym to escort Bentley away—to get him out from underfoot—but he still could see his mother’s eyes and couldn’t quite decide whether it was sadness or fear that he saw there.

  Or was it a strange intermingling of them both? Bentley wondered as he closed his special book and stood, going to the attic window to gaze at the wooded property. He enjoyed looking out over the forest, at the examples of life and death on display there. As if not wanting to disappoint, a hawk swooped down out of the sky toward the body of a felled tree. A tiny rabbit attempted to escape the hawk’s keen eye, but soon found itself clutched in the bird of prey’s talons, and was carried off.

  Nature is sometimes cruel, the boy thought, watching the flapping hawk disappear in the distance with its prize, but he doubted that it was anything personal.

  There was more movement below, and he craned his neck to see out of the far lower corner of the window.

  Is that somebody outside?

  Yes! he realized excitedly, as he spotted a blond-haired little girl stealthily creeping around the trees.

  He wondered who she could be, and then realized that he was smiling. He certainly didn’t know the girl, but for some reason she seemed to make him happy. Bentley was about to rap on the window as loudly as he could to attract her attention when she looked up at the house.

  He could have sworn she was looking directly at him, but that was impossible, he was too far away to …

  Bentley could just about make out that she was smiling, when she began to wave.

  She did see him. He waved back, thinking that she must have had eyes like a … like a hawk, he thought, and began to laugh.

  Suddenly, he had a nearly irresistible urge to go outside and meet the pretty little stranger. He bolted for the trapdoor to the attic, lifting it carefully so as not to alert anyone who might still be looking for him. Then he cautiously skulked down the stairs to the first floor and into the warmth of the kitchen, where something boiled noisily upon the stove. He grabbed an old jacket hanging on a hook beside the back door and pulled it on. For some strange reason he was desperate—anxious that the mysterious little girl would be gone by the time he managed to get outside.

  He opened the door, no longer worried about attracting the attention of Pym or his parents, and raced out into the backyard, only to feel his hopes dashed to the rocks as he reached the edge of the wooded area and found it barren of life. With shoulders slumped, he was about to return to his home when he sensed her presence.

  Turning around, he found her peering out from behind a mighty oak, smiling slyly.

  “I thought you’d left,” Bentley said, ecstatic to see her there.

  “Why would I leave?” she asked, stepping out from her hiding place so that he could see her. For a moment he wondered why she wasn’t wearing a coat, only a pretty, red velvet dress, but that thought was quickly forgotten as she continued to speak. “I was waiting for you, Bentley.”

  “How do you know my name?” Bentley asked, with a curious tilt of his head.

  “I know lots of things,” she said, moving closer to take his hand in hers. Her touch was very cold, but it was cold outside, and he thought nothing more about it as they went off into the woods to play.

  It was as if they had been friends since the day he was born.

  Chapter Seven

  Pym worried about Bentley.

  He smiled slightly as he flicked the feather duster over the top of the heavy piece of furniture in the foyer, remembering the sickly child that he’d cared for in his early days at Hawthorne House.

  Bentley may no longer have been a child, but as far as Pym was concerned, his services were still required.

  Someone needed to look after the boy, especially since he’d taken up his rather bizarre, and potentially quite dangerous, hobby.

  Pym recalled the first time he’d come to the realization that something about the boy was changing dramatically, and that he might need to keep a watchful eye on him.

  The voice had been unrecognizable—ragged and raw sounding. Pym had actually believed that intruders had found their way into Hawthorne House and were talking as they prepared to plunder the home. He remembered how he’d taken hold of a silver candlestick, ready to bludgeon the first stranger that he came across.

  The horrible-sounding voice had been coming from one of the empty guest rooms on the building’s third floor, an odd place for burglars to be searching for valuables, he’d thought. Those rooms had been empty for quite a long time, ever since most of the staff had been let go. They were primarily used for storage now.

  Pym remembered his terror as he’d taken hold of the doorknob, turning it quickly and throwing open the door, candlestick raised. At that moment he had believed he was ready to face just about anything.

  And he had been wrong. />
  Inside the room he’d found Bentley, wearing the hideous skeleton mask that he’d recently found in the attic, standing in front of a dresser mirror, speaking to his gruesome reflection. He was wearing the top coat of one of his deceased father’s suits, but not any pants, just his underwear.

  “Look upon this visage of death and tremble,” Pym remembered Bentley growling at his skeletal reflection, not even realizing that he was no longer alone in the room.

  “Bentley?” Pym had called softly, lowering his candlestick weapon.

  It had taken a moment for the youth to respond, to pull his eyes from his reflection in the old mirror.

  “Yes, Pym?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Practicing,” he’d said, turning back to his masked reflection.

  Pym had been ready to question his charge, but decided that perhaps it might be wise to let it go, yet another phase that the boy was going through.

  And he’d left him there. Practicing. But truly having no idea as to what Bentley was making reference to.

  Now Pym was more than aware. That initial belief—hope, actually—that Bentley’s odd behavior was simply another youthful fancy had gone by the wayside.

  It was so much more than that.

  “Pym!” Bentley called out, startling the butler.

  He looked up to see Bentley, fully clothed, trotting down the staircase, and felt his heart flutter with worry once more. There must be something terribly wrong, he thought. It was far too early for the young man to be out of his bedroom, never mind fully dressed.

  “What is it?” he asked, rushing to meet Bentley at the foot of the stairs.

  “Newspapers.”

  “Newspapers, sir?”

  “Yes. Do we still have the old copies about?”

  Pym had to pause and think for a moment. “Yes, I believe we do,” he answered slowly. “They’re down in the basement, ready to be burned in the furnace.”

  “Are there any from a few weeks back?”

  “Yes, and some more recent than that. Why?”

  “Excellent.” Bentley rubbed his hands together. “I need you to bring them up to my room at once!”

  “Up to your … all of them?” Pym asked incredulously.

  “Yes, and the quicker you get them, the better,” Bentley said, turning around on the last step and heading back up the stairs.

  “May I inquire as to why?”

  “Research, Pym,” Bentley called over his shoulder as he continued to climb. “I must do my research.”

  The question of what kind of research danced on the tip of the butler’s tongue, but once again, he decided not to ask it, fearful of the response. Instead, he retreated to the kitchen, and the cellar door.

  There were newspapers to retrieve.

  * * *

  Bentley had never stopped to really think about how much was going on in the city, and the world as well. It was a perpetual machine of constant happenings, but only the events that managed to be noticed were written up in the papers.

  Fascinating, he thought as he flipped through the pages, his eyes scanning them from top to bottom, in search of any information about the murder of Tianna Hoops and her supposed killer, William Tuttle. He vaguely remembered having read something about the trial and the conviction of the trapeze artist’s murderer.

  The ghost of Tianna stood resolutely nearby as he perused the news. He could feel her presence, a cold sensation radiating upon his back.

  “I’m trying,” he told her. “Without specific dates it’s difficult for me to…”

  The door to his bedroom flew open, and Pym stumbled in, his arms loaded with yet another stack of newsprint.

  “This is the last of them,” the butler wheezed, dropping the pile on the floor beside the last he’d hauled up from the basement.

  “Thank you, Pym.”

  “How goes your research?” the butler asked, catching his breath as he carefully stretched his spine.

  “Slowly, I’m afraid,” Bentley said, scanning and turning the page. “There is so much … news here.”

  “That’s to be expected in a daily periodical,” Pym said. “Is there anything that I might do to…?”

  “Here,” Bentley said, his eyes finally falling on a story about William Tuttle’s sentencing. He leaned forward to read. “It says here that he was convicted unanimously and sentenced to death by the electric chair,” he said.

  “And who would that be?”

  “William Tuttle,” Bentley said.

  “And he’s important to us why?”

  “Supposedly he murdered his girlfriend,” Bentley said, setting the paper back down upon the table. He glanced over to see that Tianna’s ghost was silently crying again.

  “Supposedly?” Pym questioned.

  “He confessed to the act,” Bentley said, again looking to the ghost for answers. “And all the evidence was right there.”

  “Yet you said ‘supposedly,’” Pym reiterated. “You don’t believe he did it?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe.” Bentley watched as the ghost of the woman with the horribly bruised neck continued to cry, her tears of absolute sorrow flowing about the room like smoke.

  “If there’s even a suspicion of innocence, then the true perpetrator must be found.”

  Chapter Eight

  BEFORE:

  Abraham did everything he could not to notice: distracting himself with the magnitude of running one of the country’s largest munitions manufacturers, as well as little things, like immersing himself in the news of the world with his morning paper while having his coffee.

  They were all shields. And as long as they were up, he didn’t have to see. He didn’t have to pay attention.

  He didn’t have to feel.

  “Good morning, Poppa,” a young voice said, suddenly chipping away at his wall.

  Abraham lowered his paper to see that his son had risen early and had joined him at the dining room table.

  “Hmmm,” the boy’s father replied, hoping the conversation would go no further than that. The wall had to be maintained.

  But he could feel the child’s eyes upon him—upon his wall—burning through the surface of the newspaper to get to him on the other side.

  Abraham lowered his paper again. “Can I help you with something?” he asked. “Where’s your mother? Perhaps you should go find her and…”

  “What are you reading about?” young Bentley asked.

  “The world,” Abraham replied, raising the paper again. “Things about which a young man like yourself should not yet concern himself. There will be plenty of time for that in your coming years.”

  He lowered his paper again to look upon the child—Why did I do that? Why did I let my shield go down? he scolded himself.

  And he saw the sadness of it all, and what he had been trying to hide from himself in the smiling face of a little boy.

  Abraham saw the vitality in the smile, but he also saw the manifestations of illness around it: the paleness of his son’s skin, the cracking of the flesh at the corners of Bentley’s exuberant expression. He appeared even more ill than he had the last time Abraham had looked at him.

  The last time he’d let the wall come down.

  “What is it, Poppa?” Bentley asked, real concern evident in the child’s tone. “Is something wrong?”

  Is something wrong, the child asked. Of course there was something wrong. How could something like this be happening to the likes of Abraham Hawthorne? How dare the gods in the sky torture him in this way? Didn’t they know who he was? How powerful the Hawthorne family was?

  But the gods don’t care, Abraham thought, swearing that he could actually see his son dwindling away before his eyes. The gods were cruel, of that he had no doubt.

  “There’s nothing wrong,” he lied. “Go find Pym and have him make you a healthy breakfast,” he commanded the boy.

  Without another word, Bentley slid off the high wooden chair and ran off toward the kitche
n.

  Abraham was angry—angry and desperate. He quickly folded up his newspaper, the barrier between his feelings and cold, harsh reality, and threw it down upon the tabletop.

  His wife came into the room carrying a vase of freshly cut flowers. There was the hint of a smile on her face as she set them down, but then she saw the look on his own.

  “What is it?” she asked, her fear growing.

  “Time is running out,” he said, and he could tell by the way she stared that she understood what he was talking about. “I’m going to talk to him.”

  “He—he said that the—the process would take time,” she stammered. “That he’d never attempted anything like this before and—”

  “We don’t have the time,” Abraham interrupted rather frantically. “I have to know if he’s going to be ready … if it’s going to be ready.”

  * * *

  Abraham Hawthorne barreled through the halls of his sprawling home, feeling his anxiety turn to anger as he made his way toward the renovated solarium.

  The twin doors to the room given to the professor for his work were closed, which usually meant the man didn’t want to be disturbed, but Abraham was beyond such polite considerations.

  “Romulus!” Abraham bellowed as he threw open the doors to the room, now filled with banks of strange machines that hummed like hives of aroused bees.

  The professor was handling a long glass tube very carefully.

  “The filaments in this bulb are incredibly delicate,” he said, his eyes not leaving the trembling strands of extremely thin wire inside the glass container. “One sudden move could cause them to disconnect and set us back weeks.”

  Abraham watched, and found himself actually holding his breath as the professor carried the bulb over to one of the humming machines. Romulus bent forward toward an open hatch that exposed the complex internal workings of the machine, carefully inserted the tube into the hatch, then slowly withdrew his hands from the device.

  “There,” he said, a smile of accomplishment gradually appearing on his bearded face as he gently closed the metal hatch and turned toward Abraham. “What can I do for you this fine morning, sir?”