Tales of the Shadowmen 3: Danse Macabre

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

  Volume 3: Danse Macabre

  edited by

  Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier

  stories by

  Matthew Baugh, Alfredo Castelli,

  Bill Cunningham, François Darnaudet,

  Paul DiFilippo, Win Scott Eckert, G.L. Gick,

  Micah Harris, Travis Hiltz, Rick Lai,

  Jean-Marc Lofficier, Xavier Mauméjean,

  David A. McIntee, Brad Mengel,

  Michael Moorcock, John Peel,

  Joseph Altairac & Jean-Luc Rivera,

  Chris Roberson, Robert L. Robinson, Jr.

  and Brian Stableford

  cover by

  Daylon

  A Black Coat Press Book

  Table of Contents

  Introduction: My Life as a Shadowman 4

  Matthew Baugh: The Heart of the Moon 8

  Alfredo Castelli: Long Live Fantômas 26

  Bill Cunningham: Next! 38

  François Darnaudet & J.-M. Lofficier: Au Vent Mauvais... 41

  Paul DiFilippo: Return to the 20th Century 47

  Win Scott Eckert: Les Lèvres Rouges 72

  G.L. Gick: Beware the Beasts 97

  Micah Harris: The Ape Gigans 101

  Travis Hiltz: A Dance of Night and Death 132

  Rick Lai: The Lady in the Black Gloves 142

  Jean-Marc Lofficier: The Murder of Randolph Carter 175

  Xavier Mauméjean: A Day in the Life of Madame Atomos 182

  David A. McIntee: Bullets Over Bombay 189

  Brad Mengel: All’s Fair... 201

  Michael Moorcock: The Affair of the Bassin des Hivers 204

  John Peel: The Successful Failure 226

  Joseph Altairac & Jean-Luc Rivera: The Butterfly Files 246

  Chris Roberson: The Famous Ape 251

  Robert L. Robinson, Jr.: Two Hunters 271

  Brian Stableford: The Child-Stealers 283

  Credits 383

  Introduction: My Life as a Shadowman

  I became a Shadowman in 1963, when I was 9 years old.

  The curriculum at the Catholic School of Grand-Lebrun in Bordeaux was strong on history (my favorite subject), geography, math, natural sciences, etc. but sorely lacked classes on such vital topics as sabotage, kidnapping and international trafficking. Or so I thought.

  A few months earlier, a neighbor had thrown three bound collections of Spirou magazine into the trash. Spirou was one of the weekly comic books named after a popular character that I used to buy every week. Each issue contained about 20 stories, ranging from humor to serious adventure, serialized at the rate of two pages per week. Since no two stories ever began or ended the same week, there was ample motivation to buy the next issue when it came out, on Thursday. Later, the publisher would bind the issues returned by the newsagents and sell them as handsome collections.

  The three collections the two neighborhood friends and I had been lucky to rescue from the trashman were old ones, dating back to 1955 and 1956. We each took home a book and devoured it

  It is in that bound volume of old Spirous that I discovered the character of Monsieur Choc. Tall, lanky, dressed in a dinner jacket, he hid his features behind a medieval helmet. Monsieur Choc was the archenemy of two rotund detectives, Tif and Tondu, and the head of an international crime cartel called the White Hand. The page reproduced here, taken from the very same story I read in 1963, shows the nefarious villain preparing to commit an act of sabotage. The cartoony nature of the art barely made up for the rather serious and suspense-filled plot. 1

  Heavy stuff, especially when you’re nine.

  So, right then and there, despite my generally-accepted lack of tallness, lankiness, dinner jacket and medieval helmet, I decided to start a chapter of the White Hand at Grand-Lebrun, promoting myself to the title of Choc. I quickly enlisted two of my school friends, F*** and M***, and soon, we were on our way to becoming a world-spanning criminal organization.

  As far as I can recall today, our activities were mostly limited to exchanging secret notes in class to notify each other of secret meetings, during which we would devise more ingenious ways of exchanging secret notes. It might seem rather pointless and silly, but now that I’m a grown-up, I know that many Government organizations still work on the same principles, so it can’t have been all that bad.

  Alas, a few days later, an eternity in school time (which appears inordinately expanded to children), one of my notes was intercepted by the stalwart Mrs. B***, our lovely schoolmistress, and I was sent for a “talk” with the priest in charge of the “young children’s” division, the tough-but-fair Father C***.

  He tried to make me give up the identity of the mysterious “Hoc” who had signed the note, thereby crushing my hopes of a future career as a logo designer. I had thought it clever to turn the C of “Choc” into an open ellipse and write the “hoc” inside it. The good Father, probably because of his familiarity with Latin, had only read the hoc part.

  The priests had ways of making us talk. Despite the threat of the dreaded detention, which meant coming into school on our day off, Thursday, to spend hours writing Latin conjugations, I remained obdurately silent and did not betray the secrets of the White Hand. That was probably as much due to the embarrassment of having to explain the name was Choc, not Hoc. But still.

  The organization was in dire straits, with the personal blow to its leader, me, now under threat of having to write a hundred amo, amas, amats if I didn’t start singing like the proverbial canary. The day was grim indeed. A Churchillian effort was called for.

  The popular game in our age bracket that year was marbles. An entire secondary market had developed, with kids trading cloudy glass marbles, clear glass marbles, glass marbles with spaghetti-like motifs inside, larger glass marbles (berlons) and other exotic marble varieties. One school bully, the dreaded D***, assisted by two future little thugs-in-training, had taken to stealing marbles from smaller and weaker kids, which basically included everyone besides themselves. Fear of swift physical retribution had been enough to keep the matter hushed up. If you want to learn about Omerta, talk to a 9-year-old.

  The next day, I returned to see Father C*** as I had been “invited” to do, presumably having had time to reflect upon my sins and now being prepared to make a full and uncoerced confession.

  “It’s D***, Father,” I blurted out. “He steals our marbles.”

  “He steals your marbles?”

  “Yes, Father. And then, he loses them by playing with the older kids.” I had no particular evidence of this, but it sounded good. “That’s why I sent the note to F***. To warn him,” I added by way of explanation.

  This blew the lid open on the Great Marbles Scandal of ’63. Father C***’s robust investigation quickly exposed the dastardly D*** and his cohorts’ villainy and they were properly punished, forced to apologize publicly and their loot confiscated. I was given to understand that D’s father, in the military, had not been too pleased either.

  I never had to write hundreds of Latin verbs on Thursday, but upon reflection, I did come to the conclusion than life as a mystery man was far too complicated. I had managed to extricate myself successfully this time, and expose a villain in the process, but could one count on such luck again?

  So there ended my life as a Shadowman, while I turned my sights to the more realistic goal of becoming a soccer champion.

  This third anthology again features the dreams and visions of writers from around the world–this time, Australia and Italy are added to our roster–who also once dreamed of being Shadowmen. Fantômas dances on Paris’ rooftops, Doctor Omega defies the Lords of Vampire City, the Cat Women of the Mo
on threaten to plunge the world into chaos and King Kong falls in love for the first time; welcome once again to our annual merry-go-round of heroes and villains of popular literature, the danse macabre of of the Shadowmen.

  Jean-Marc Lofficier

  Although Paul Féval is not as well remembered today as Alexandre Dumas, he is one of the true giants of popular literature. His John Devil and The Black Coats series are amongst the earliest examples of detective and crime stories; his Wandering Jew’s Daughter is pure fantasy; and finally, his Vampire Countess and Vampire City are essential pre-Dracula texts for any serious scholar of vampire fiction. It is therefore fitting that Matthew Baugh opens this collection with a tale revisiting Féval’s vampire metropolis, Selene, which has never before seen visitors like the fearless crew Matt has gathered in…

  Matthew Baugh: The Heart of the Moon

  Selene, 1790

  “Are you sure it will take all of us?” I asked. “It’s just four men and a girl, and two of the men are old.”

  Prince Vseslav scowled at me. It was a terrifying expression he had practiced for the last 800 years.

  “Don’t tell me you’re frightened, Yvgeny,” he said. “Were you not a Cossack in life?”

  This was true, though the implication that all Cossacks are fierce and bloodthirsty was simplistic and I found the comment vaguely offensive. I am bloodthirsty, but have never been exceptionally fierce, and the thirst has more to do with being a vampire than a Cossack.

  “I’m not afraid, my Prince,” I replied. “It’s only that you require so many of us for this little job.”

  “You’re still young in the ways of the undead,” he said. “These men are vampire hunters. As such, they may be more than what they seem. Do I need to remind you of all of the mischief the Englishwoman wrought in our city with only a manservant, a physician and an Irish rogue to help her?”

  I nodded, though without any real enthusiasm. Miss Ward’s adventure was three years past, but it still rankled the elders. When they mentioned it, there was nothing we, the younger undead, could do but agree and settle in for the diatribe that was sure to follow.

  Fortunately, there was no time for speeches now. I fell into rank with my ten companions and, at our lord’s signal, we swept down on the campfire.

  We moved as silently as shadows; only the green glow of our eyes could be seen. I do not know what it was that alerted them to our presence, but two of them sprang to their feet and drew weapons.

  The younger of these two looked like a military officer, tall and broad-shouldered. He was no match for a vampire, of course, but I prefer not to excavate pistol balls from my flesh if I can help it. I thought about going after the gaunt old man beside him. Slaying an armed fighter would garner some favor with my Prince. I decided against it when I saw the plain wooden cross around his neck.

  I know that Ruthven and many others insist that the vampiric weakness to holy symbols is an outmoded superstition, but I have never chosen to test it myself. Vseslav says it is a chancy business, unless both you and your prey are atheists. Even then, he advises against it. In this instance, I thought the black-clad man’s eyes burned with the same fire I remembered in old father Dimitri when I was a child. I decided to leave the religious zealot for someone else to fight.

  The young girl’s throat looked tender, but there would be too much competition for it. I decided to attack the other old man. He looked frail and had no weapons. As I neared him, he pulled a shiny metal device from his pocket and pressed a switch on it. It emitted a shrill sound that caused my head to erupt with blinding pain. I shot past the old man and into the woods on the other side of the camp.

  I plugged my ears with my fingers and found that I could shut out enough sound to make the pain bearable. It seemed that I was the only one who had the sense to flee. My companions were doing their best to fight, despite the disabling noise. They were not doing at all well.

  The girl and the fourth man, who had a twisted spine, were huddled close to my white-haired nemesis. The old fanatic was laying about him with a strange staff which had a cat’s head fetish carved at one end. The cat’s eyes seemed to blaze with eldritch fire and, with each blow, one of my brethren crumbled to dust and ash.

  The young man had a curved sword which he used with two hands. He had already decapitated several of the vampires. This does not slay the children of Vseslav, but it does hinder us, and that gave him the chance to sprinkle a clear liquid from a silver flask on their bodies. Within moments, there was nothing left of my poor comrades.

  “Such a bother!” the old man turned off his sound machine and put it back in his jacket. “Not one of them captured alive.”

  “ ’Tis not possible to capture such as these alive, Doctor Omega,” the other oldster said. “They all died long ago.”

  “Yes, yes,” the Doctor answered with a show of impatience. “Technically you’re right, Solomon, but you know very well what I mean.”

  “That was quite a demonstration of skill, Captain,” the girl interjected. I had the sense she spoke largely to distract the two old men from a quarrel. “That is a katana such as the Japanese samurai use, is it not?”

  The blonde man grinned and bowed gallantly.

  “Indeed it is, Miss Amberson. I once visited Japan where I did a kindness for a man named Hanzo. He gave me this sword and taught me its use. It was forged by the great swordsmith, Muramasa.”

  “I notice you also carry a rapier.”

  “They’re like lovely sisters,” he replied. “Equally desirable, each in her own way. As I am unable to choose, I love them both.”

  “Promiscuity with women and swords will be your end,” old Solomon growled. “You put too much trust in a heathen-forged blade.”

  “You’re not in the position to call the kettle black,” the Captain countered. “Your staff is a voodoo fetish.”

  The old man scowled darkly but said nothing.

  “In any case, you both did magnificently!” the hunchback interjected, “And you too, Doctor! Your scientific device was amazing! I must learn the principles of its function.”

  “Just a trifle,” the old man said dismissively. “We can save such chit-chat for tomorrow. I don’t expect our friends will attack again tonight and I plan to get an early start. Maciste will be waiting for us in Stregoicavar.”

  I slipped back to report this matter to my Prince. Predictably, he was furious.

  “The Captain, I know!” he said when his anger had abated. “He and his bent-backed companion are the most successful of all who hunt our kind. The old man with the staff reminds me of an English Puritan whom I had thought dead nearly 200 years. The others are not known to me, but they’re clearly a danger. I must return to Selene at once and report this to the Elders. While I’m gone, it’ll be up to you to stop these wretched humans.”

  “My Prince,” I stammered. “I am your servant, of course, but how can one succeed where a dozen failed?”

  “When one has been cunning enough to flee, one is clever enough to find a way,” Vseslav answered. “I know that one is also wise enough to realize what will happen if one fails again.”

  I promised and then I stood back as my master took on the shape of a gigantic wolf. He howled once, and then bounded away at a speed that not even a falcon could match.

  “Thank you, my Prince,” I muttered bitterly. “I’m honored by the hopeless task you’ve set for me.”

  As I followed the little group, I learned of their habits. The hunchback was a scientist, though not nearly of the caliber of the mysterious Doctor Omega. He continually pestered the older man with questions. The girl, Telzey Amberdon, was the Doctor’s companion and she, too, seemed to have a brain for science. The conversations between the three of them bored me to tears.

  Old Solomon was the group’s self-appointed scout and I was careful to steer as far from him as I could. By contrast, the Captain seemed lackadaisical. He spent most of the time riding in the back of the wagon where he would nap, smoke odd s
melling cigarettes, or flirt with the girl. The Doctor didn’t seem to approve of this, nor did old Solomon. (In fairness, it was hard to tell if Solomon approved of much of anything.)

  Three days later, the party came to the sleepy Hungarian town of Stregoicavar and rented several rooms at the local inn. By this time, I had come up with a plan that would afford me the best chance of success, not to mention survival.

  The girl was the weak link. Though seemingly precocious, she was still in her teens and was left out of much of the socializing of the menfolk. That evening, the four of them left her in the inn and went to the tavern to try to learn any news of the man they were to meet.

  The opportunity was ideal. I could not enter the inn–the rituals that humans use to bless their homes are more effective than they imagine–but I could call to her. I have learned the vampiric art of thought projection and was especially adept–if I’m permitted to brag–at using it to charm the fair sex.

  I threw everything I had into entrancing her and to filling her head with dark urgings. After a moment, she looked up, then closed her book and set it aside. She rose and opened the door.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Did you call me?”

  “What?” I stammered, surprised that she could speak. Under my spell, she should have been like a sleepwalker.

  “Did you ask me to come to the door?” She spoke slowly and clearly, as if she thought I was simple-minded.

  “Yes,” I answered. “Come to me, Telzey Amberdon, your will is no longer your own.”

  “You’re using mental telepathy, aren’t you?” she said. “I’m afraid you’re not very good at it.”

  “I–I’m not?”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but no.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that. It occurred to me that it might be better to continue this conversation in a different place. I didn’t want Solomon or the Captain turning up unexpectedly. I took a step in her direction, but she held out a cross.