by Mike Mignola
He heard it immediately upon passing the wooden lectern where a barker would have stood to draw people into the exhibit: a strange, strange sound.
A song, really.
And he was pulled along as if taken by the hand.
The darkness inside the chamber welcomed him, dancing to the song as it drew him along, past the display of dragon’s bones and shrunken heads, past the malformed babies floating happily in their jars of yellow preservative.
The song carried him along like a warm ocean current.
He’d only been to the ocean once in his life; after seeing a picture of the Atlantic City boardwalk in one of his mother’s magazines, a young Bentley had asked if they could go there someday.
He remembered the looks on his parents’ faces; concern from his mother, and a kind of relieved happiness from his father. Bentley had wondered about those looks—seeing them often in recollection—and determined that they were likely a response to how he’d been as a child. He’d never asked to go anywhere, had been perfectly content to stay in his room reading, or exploring the wooded fringes of the grounds. His illness kept him close to home. For him to ask to actually go someplace, away from the protection of Hawthorne House—it must have been quite startling to his parents.
His mother would have preferred he stay at home, where he would be safe—where the harsh world outside could not harm him. But his father … his father seemed overjoyed at the idea that his sickly homebody of a son actually wanted to venture outside the protection of the house.
Moving through the darkness, past the unearthly displays, Bentley remembered the excitement of his excursion to New Jersey, as well as the absolute terror.
The fear became pronounced, as if being pulled up from somewhere deep inside him, like an infection drawn to the surface by a warm cloth. It was the strange sound—the lilting song—filling the Chamber that was causing it.
It pulled his fear up from the depths, making him remember how afraid he’d been when he’d first seen it, standing upon the boardwalk.
As far as the eye could see, its blackish-blue mass writhing and seething and crashing upon the shore, calling to him in a loud roaring voice, Come to me, and I will show you how small and insignificant you are. Come to me, and I will pull you into my embrace and force you to see the terrors hidden beneath me.
Bentley remembered his fear of the ocean. It was as clear at that very moment as if he had been transported back through time. He wanted to run as he’d run that day, to hide away in the hotel room, trembling with fear, until his father finally gave up and took him home.
He wanted to turn and run, but the song drew him onward, deeper into the chamber.
Into the heart of the unearthly.
* * *
The strange, haunting song pulled him along, past the empty displays for the gorilla that believed he was a man and the Human Dynamo. Briefly Bentley thought about the pair, and whether they would return to the circus, but the song distracted him.
The song told him not to worry, to clear his mind.
He moved past the displays, walking drunkenly through the room toward his destination.
There was only the song now.
At the end of the room, a dusty velvet curtain hung, and he quickened his steps toward it, reaching out with trembling hands to grip the red, sultry obstruction and rip it aside.
As the curtain tore away, the song abruptly stopped, and Bentley found himself slowly able to think again.
In this section of the room, he found who he was looking for.
Doctor Nocturne was in the process of packing up the room’s only exhibit, hooking up the tank of dark, murky water to a system of pulleys that would lift and lower it onto a wheeled cart for transport.
Nocturne looked at the skull-masked man standing just inside the curtained-off area.
“The exhibit, I’m afraid, is closed,” Nocturne said, his words slurring as they left his mouth. The Doctor then turned away, as if he’d been talking to some random rube, and went about checking to make sure that the tank was secure.
Grim Death produced the twin Colts from his coat pockets.
“It’s time you paid for your crimes, Doctor Nocturne,” Grim Death growled. “And the cost will be most dear.”
The Doctor seemed to not hear him at all, muttering to himself as he made sure the hoist’s straps and buckles were tightened.
Grim Death walked closer.
“Face your penance for crimes against the innocent, villain!” Grim Death announced, gripping the twin Colts tightly.
The Doctor continued with his work, almost as if in some sort of trance. And then Bentley remembered the strange song, and how he’d lost all focus when he’d heard it. He wondered if the Doctor could somehow be under the influence of …
Something moved within the tank, splashing about and startling him. Bentley found himself pointing his guns toward the activity. A horrific sight peered out at him through the filthy water: a face, and clawed, webbed hands pressed against the glass.
What in the name of all that’s holy…? Bentley thought as the creature watched him with round, bulging eyes filled with a cunning intelligence. The sign had said it was the last living mermaid, but Bentley saw none of the seductive beauty associated with those mythical creatures. The thing that stared at him from behind the glass of the water-filled tank was more sea monster than seductress.
The mermaid seemed to react to his revulsion, thick lips pulling back to reveal nearly transparent needle-sharp teeth. She turned her unblinking gaze to Doctor Nocturne, who continued to work on the bindings, unfazed by what was occurring around him. The mermaid swam toward the end of the tank, looking at the man as he worked, and then opened her mouth.
The song was hers, and it froze Grim Death in place and filled him with an increasing fear. And as he watched the Doctor react to the sound, Bentley slowly began to understand what was happening here.
And how his assumptions had been wrong.
The Doctor stared at the mermaid as she sang her song, his mouth moving as if the two were somehow communicating.
And then Nocturne turned his attention to Grim Death, the expression upon his face filled with a sudden rage.
“You escaped me already tonight,” the Doctor said, his voice now strangely flat, as were his eyes, something familiar from Grim Death’s conflict with the Human Dynamo and the ape.
“But I’m not going to let it happen again.”
As the enthralled owner came toward him, Grim Death suddenly came to realize what the threat at the Circus of Unearthly Wonderment actually was.
And it wasn’t Doctor Nocturne.
* * *
From the pocket of his long waistcoat, Doctor Nocturne produced a knife, snapping open the blade as he stalked toward Grim Death.
The mermaid continued to sing her song, the strange sounds making their way inside Bentley’s head, like long, pointed fingers sinking into his brain. He raised his pistols to thwart the Doctor’s eventual attack, but something suddenly told him—
No.
With no control of his own, Bentley lowered his guns as the Doctor awkwardly stepped closer. A smile appeared upon his slackened face.
Bentley was able to turn his gaze toward the mermaid—the siren—as she watched from the protection of her tank. She wore the same smile he could see reflected upon the face of Doctor Nocturne, the man she now controlled with her strange song.
“What are you?” he managed to ask, attempting to raise his guns, but with little effect.
She would not have it.
The siren pressed her face to the thick glass of her tank, hair like seaweed billowing out around her oddly shaped head. Her lips moved, and the song became even louder. It was as if she were singing directly into his skull; images that he could not understand began to appear there. Memories.
Memories that were not his own.
She was answering his question with her song.
What are you?
He saw
the ocean, vast and terrifying, and cried out as it swept over him, dragging him down in its cold embrace. Beneath the waves he struggled to breathe, then found that the air was present and gulped it greedily as the memories played out.
She had been content in the ocean’s deepest depths, alone but searching for any clues that others of her ilk might still live. Her curiosity and search brought her closer to the surface, and unfortunately into the hands of mankind.
Bentley experienced the panic she had felt when the fishing nets ensnared her, hauling her up from the sea’s watery embrace to the surface and the lands of the air-breathing apes.
The terror was like nothing he’d ever experienced, feeling as she felt as she lay there upon the deck of the fishing boat, suffocating in the air. He saw the crew as they looked as her, their expressions of fear and horror, and something far worse.
Greed.
These were the first humans she’d encountered, and they colored her perceptions of the entire species.
She believed she would die there upon the wooden deck of the trawler, but the humans saw that she was struggling and threw buckets of water on her, eventually untangling her aquatic form from the netting and placing her within a water-filled metal bin used for the storage of fish. They kept her alive, but for what reason she did not know.
It was while she was held within the box that she realized the first of her gifts. She learned that she could see into these creatures’ minds, understand their thoughts and intentions, and she saw that she was to be sold into captivity.
Too weak to fight her way back to the sea, she was transported to the land.
The memories grew disjointed—fragmented—as she clung to life. Sold to the highest bidder, she was barely alive as she was transported from one sideshow to the next. She was mere hours away from death when she was ensconced within her latest home in the Chamber of the Unearthly. This would be the last of the indignities she would suffer, she believed, feeling her life slipping away as she lay within the seawater-filled tank.
Bentley felt her despair, experiencing her want to die in order to be free of the torture that her life had become.
But it was all suddenly different—she heard his thoughts, felt his inherent goodness.
Bentley saw the man through the brackish waters and glass of her tank: William Tuttle, a roustabout for the circus, his big heart overflowing with compassion.
He saw her as more than just a thing pulled from the sea.
Bentley suddenly experienced waves of emotion, and knew that the stranger from the sea had come to love the big, friendly man, looking forward to when he’d come to the chamber to tinker with the filtering apparatus on her tank, or to make sure that she was being fed properly.
He cared for her—the only one in this strange, quite horrible surface world who had.
She loved him, and she believed he felt the same.
It was while experiencing this love that she learned of another ability of her species. Being able to see into the minds of these creatures was one thing, but she came to learn that her voice—her song—could put them into her thrall, allowing her to enter their minds and control their actions.
The images that followed showed her gradual control over her new talent, and how she had no fear of using it, especially when it pertained to William Tuttle.
Heaven help anybody who dared insult her love in any way, for they would feel the bite of her wrath. For the simplest of offenses, circus workers had been gravely injured, and some had even lost their lives.
Bentley felt her joy at the power she now wielded. For the first time in oh so long, she was in control.
But it was all about to come crashing down.
The images—the memories—that followed were painful, sharp, like jagged glass slicing away pieces of his brain. It was excruciating to experience them, and he saw that she had been brought to the brink of madness over what had transpired.
For the first time, the images appearing inside his head—the memories of the sea siren—were vaguely familiar. Bentley had experienced similar memories, but from a different point of view.
He’d seen them through the eyes of a murdered trapeze artist.
William Tuttle came into the Chamber of the Unearthly, and Bentley felt the happiness that came with the big man’s visits.
But this time he wasn’t alone.
Bentley felt the happiness turn to hurt, and then to anger as sharp as a shark’s tooth.
He had brought somebody with him, a female, and the way the two were acting …
She had looked inside his skull, and did not like what she found.
William had feelings for this female … feelings he should have held only for her.
She watched them with hurt- and hate-filled eyes. William didn’t even look in her direction, the two of them whispering and laughing to themselves as they strolled around the dark wooden structure.
She couldn’t stand it—all the rage built up inside, roiling at her core until she could bear it no more and released her fury in a siren’s song.
Viciously, she took hold of William’s mind and body, making sure the violation was as painful as it could be. And, still burning with unspeakable rage, she turned that anger on the female.
How dare she think she could have him?
She marveled at how powerful his body was as she took control, allowing her fury to guide her actions, smiling with his face as he wrapped his strong, large hands around the female’s throat. The way the woman’s mouth moved as his fingers squeezed, the mermaid was reminded of the suffocating fish that she’d shared a metal locker with on board the boat that had pulled her from the sea.
The female was dead long before the siren released William from her control, the betrayal and anger that she was feeling desperate to come out. Satisfied by the act of murder, she now wanted to watch the man suffer. Freeing his mind from her clutches, she watched from her tank as he emerged from the darkness that had engulfed him to see what he had done.
What she had done.
What she saw then satisfied her sick and twisted desire to see the man suffer, and she took great pleasure from the horror and pain that he felt as he gazed down upon the murdered female, unaware of what had occurred but knowing that he had somehow been responsible.
The siren let her hold upon Bentley’s brain relax ever so slightly. He had been standing rigidly stiff, his hands down by his sides. His eyes were locked upon her gruesome visage. The remnants of what it was like to be her were still with him. Bentley felt the misery of her existence and her anger toward this world, and how she wanted everyone to pay for her pain.
Killing all who hurt her—one at a time, if necessary.
“You’ll need to pay for your crimes,” he said to her, having no control over the words that flowed from his mouth. They weren’t his words, per se, but the words of the one he now served.
She seemed to understand his pledge, swirling around inside her tank, flipping her massive fishlike tail to splash water upon the wooden floor in response.
And the siren sang again, louder and stronger, for all to hear. Doctor Nocturne, suddenly mere inches from him, plunged the blade of his knife into the meat of Grim Death’s upper body.
Chapter Twenty-four
BEFORE:
Pym worried about the boy.
Even though he was, for all intents and purposes, an adult, the butler still found himself fretting over the young man whom he’d watched and helped grow up over the years.
Pym stood before his mirror, brushing his thinning black hair over the roundness of his skull before slipping into the black jacket that was part of the uniform of his chosen profession.
He did this every morning at the start of his day, looking himself straight in the eye and telling himself to have a good day. It was something his father had taught him, and something he had done in his service to the elder Hawthornes throughout the years.
Seeing that he was indeed ready, he turned from his reflection an
d was leaving the room to head down to the kitchen when his eye caught something outside through the window.
Pym went to the window, surprised to see Bentley’s back as he disappeared into the thickness of the late-fall woods. Memories of a child lost in a snowstorm echoed in his mind, and he had to wonder where the young man might be going at such an early hour. Normally, Bentley rose closer to noontime than six.
He knew that he should leave the young man alone. Whatever Bentley was doing out in the woods was none of his business.
Pym went to the kitchen and stood in its center, perfectly still, unable to remember what it was that he was going to do at that very moment.
It was the boy … Bentley. Concern for him was all-encompassing.
Pym went to the mudroom off the kitchen, grabbed the pea coat hanging by its hook, and put it on. His curiosity as to what Bentley was up to was overpowering, and he found himself leaving the mansion to follow a path at the back of the property that would take him into the wooded area, to where he’d seen Bentley going moments ago.
He thought about calling out, but part of him wanted to see what it was that the young man was doing, what could possibly have brought him out here to the middle of the forest at this early hour.
It was cold, the first hint that winter would soon be knocking at the door. Pym’s breath plumed around his face as he walked farther and farther into the woods. The path had disappeared a while back, and he felt himself growing a bit concerned about how far into the wilderness Bentley had gone. His mind immediately began to wander, and he thought of the young man’s mental state. He’d always been a delicate child, both physically and mentally, but as of late there had seemed to be a dark cloud following him. The constant construction on Hawthorne House had seemed to alleviate some of his ennui, but that soon began to falter once the newness of the act had worn off. Lately, the darkness had been more than present; Bentley would disappear into the basement for hours at a time, eventually coming up silent and somber.
Pym often wondered how strong Bentley was mentally, recalling that more than one Hawthorne in the thick family tree had taken their own lives after losing bouts with their inner darkness.